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OUR LITTLE LIFE 





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OUR 

LITTLE LIFE 

A NOVEL OF TO-DAY 


BY 

T. G. SIME 

Author of “ Sister Woman ” 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 





% 


£ 


Copyright , 1921, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 


All rights reserved 


APR - ' '92> 


© Cl. A 6 1 1 4 1 8 


& 




PROLOGUE 


A T the acute angle formed by O’Neil Street and Drayton 
Place there was, in the eighteen-sixties, a cluster of 
houses that were “good.” The Agent, whenever he had 
occasion to advertise one of these houses in Regalia’s Daily 
Plane: was accustomed to say, “A Desirable Residence on 
O’Neil Street — or Drayton Place, whichever it might happen 
to be — to Rent”; and forthwith came a rush of desirable citi- 
zens, each eager to get ahead of the other and occupy the house. 
But the eighteen-sixties are a long time ago. By the eighteen- 
eighties the houses were no longer in such demand. By the 
time the ’nineties came along they were distinctly on the down 
grade — and with the end of the century they came more or 
less to an end too. Regalia had, like the generality of cities, 
stepped westward. Her citizens had stepped with her. They 
had begun their exodus when one of the great Railway Com- 
panies of the Dominion had placed its Yards straight opposite 
the O’Neil Street windows. When a car-line was laid along 
the street, and another matched it on the parallel St. Hubert 
Boulevard — the main street of Regalia; when Drayton Place, 
the short uniting link between the thoroughfares, came to be 
peopled with cut-rate drug-stores, corner groceries, demi-semi- 
repair tailors, and “dagos” who stood at the doors of their 
Shoe-Shine Parlors showing their excellent teeth, it seemed 
time for desirable citizens to quit. They quitted. They packed 
up their belongings, their drawing-room suites and their leather- 
backed dining-room chairs, and they betook themselves to 
where no car-lines are. They formed a desirable cluster in 
Regalia West, as they named the suburb they fled to; and they 
left the O’Neil Street homes alone, forlorn, bereft of respect- 
ability, something that no desirable citizen would ever look at 
again. The houses stood empty, becoming less desirable every 
week. 

It was early in the twentieth century that a Business Woman 
with a little money to invest, passed the O’Neil Street way. 
She was desirous of finding a good investment for her hard- 
earned money, something sure and safe yet bringing in a sat- 


PROLOGUE 


viii 

isfactory yearly return. She paused before the O’Neil Street 
houses. She thought she saw her investment there. 

Slowly she walked into Drayton Place and considered the 
houses from that point of view. More slowly she returned to 
O’Neil Street, observing all the way. Next morning saw her 
at the down-town Agent’s, talking the matter over with him: 
and the following week she was the possessor of the whole 
block of what had once been desirable residences, considering 
with how little expenditure of her hard-earned money she 
could convert them into an Apartment House. This was rap- 
idly done. Three months later she was christening the finished 
investment after herself. So Penelope’s Buildings came into 
existence. 

The fact of the Buildings having begun life as a cluster of 
semi-detached dwelling-places explained certain odd construc- 
tions in the flats; also the many undesired intimacies — common 
taps of water on the landings, verandas that belonged to 
everyone and no one — that the inhabitants so reluctantly shared 
with one another. The Apartment House was the uncomfort- 
able place it was because when it had been “made over” 
comfort had been the last thing in anyone’s mind. The Busi- 
ness Woman was wanting a good investment for her money. 
The Agent wanted to be rid of his property so as to get his 
percentage. The Builder wanted to “make” his contract. The 
Penelopians found themselves in the end packed like so many 
herrings in a barrel, with the additional disadvantage (which 
herrings know nothing of) of being expected to pay as high a 
rent as could possibly be extracted from them, mainly for 
things they didn’t get. Penelope’s Buildings, almost as soon 
as it was evolved, began to become the Palace of Disagreement 
which such places generally are. 

Before long the Penelopians took to moonlight Sittings — for 
of such flesh were they made. Then the Business Woman began 
to find her job, as the Agent said, a bit too tough for her. She 
retired, handing over her property to a French-Canadian on 
the make, for a consideration of a small cash-payment down, 
the rest to be paid in yearly instalments. The French-Cana- 
dian punctually made his first small cash-payment; he then 
punctually re-sold the property for a rather larger cash-pay- 
ment to a Jew — and then decamped. The Jew, having bought 
the property out-and-out, took possession; the Business Woman 
went on claiming her further cash-instalments; the French- 
Canadian remained prudently invisible: and the affair went 


PROLOGUE 


IX 


into the hands of that Great Instrument, the Law. Now the 
Law, as we all know, is the one thing the mind of man has as 
yet been able to devise that can go on moving forever without 
getting anywhere. It is like the earth — except that it has no 
sun to go round. Until the Buildings were out of the Law 
again no tenant might have his rent increased or decreased by 
so much as a dollar, no flat might be repaired by the landlord 
to the extent of a washer on a tap: the Law revolved, the 
Buildings stood still. They stood so very still that soon it 
became patent, even to little Mr. Bellerose, the letter-carrier 
who went daily up and down the Penelopian stair, that before 
long there would be no Buildings to stand. The cracks in the 
walls became bigger and bigger; the fissures in the ceilings 
grew wider and wider. Cassie Healy, operator on pants to 
trade, knew what it was up in the attic flat, to have leakage 
from the roof: and Mrs. Savourin, the Janitress, down in her 
basement dwelling, was able to calculate from the amount of 
the floodings in her kitchen, just how damp and depressed 
Miss Healy must be feeling. The balustrades “gave.” The 
whole tenement “settled.” By the first year of the War it 
was plain to anyone who thought about it that when the Law 
had finished with Penelope’s Buildings the Business Woman’s 
good investment would have gone where good investments go 
— to that bourne whence no money can return. Yet the Jew 
and the Business Woman went on claiming their respective 
pounds of flesh. The French-Canadian went on remaining 
invisible. The tenants — happy at least in the surety that no 
rent could be raised on them — went on growing more and more 
disreputable. And in the midst of the clamor of the flats 
falling from one another brick by brick, in the midst of the 
down-at-heelness and general dilapidation, the Law, in its 
most magniloquent and majestic manner — went on talking. 
Penelope’s Buildings were doomed. 

The Penelopians, naturally, did not take this uncheerful 
view of the matter. They could not be evicted (unless the 
Police felt itself entitled to call upon them), they could not 
have their rents raised, there was no one to come and remon- 
strate with them on their ever-increasing dirtiness — they had, 
on the whole, a pleasant time. The Buildings from the out- 
side, it is true, looked a sorry sight. But inside, where the 
Penelopians were deciding what they would have for the next 
meal, things were far less gloomy. Breakfast, dinner, tea — 
that is the great Empire on which the sun never sets : meals are 


X 


PROLOGUE 


the true preoccupation of the lives of almost all of us, and the 
Penelopians were no exception to the rule. They fought with 
one another, sometimes with tongues and sometimes with fists. 
They gave black eyes and received them back again. They did 
wonders in the slandering and back-biting line: and when 
they were ill, they were angels to one another. It is queer to 
think that good things can spring from such a soil; yet loyalty 
does spring at times from the most desperate ill-usage. Courage 
may arise from cruelty. Cheerfulness is often born where 
things are hardest. The Penelopians hung up at their windows 
poor little ragged bits of curtains that once were white. They 
placed on their window-sills pots of something that looked like 
plants. They trusted that some day they would have time to 
wash the curtains; they hoped that in the spring the plants 
would flower . . . their curtains and their plants were 

the flags they flaunted in the face of Fate: and the fine things 
that sometimes sprang up in themselves were, in a sense, the 
outcome of their wretched way of life. Had you gone into any 
one of the flats and lived there awhile, you would have found 
the inhabitants of the flat planning for the future, just as 
people plan in grander residences. One would be planning for 
the time when she would live in a “real” apartment, where 
there would be a gramophone always playing and cut glass on 
the buffet. Another would have a vision of that country 
garden that grows in dreams — always full of flowers and veg- 
etables and needing no one to work it. A third would run to 
new hats and fine furs and smart boots whenever she wanted 
them, and the man would see himself boss in the softest of snaps 
with a fifty-cent cigar in his mouth all day long. The Penel- 
opians were much like the rest of the world. Hope sprang 
eternal in their human breasts. Had Pope come back in order 
to protest against the over-usage of his famous remark, even 
he could not have denied that its truth was exemplified once 
more in Penelope’s Buildings. There seemed little enough to 
hope about, but the Penelopians went on hoping. It was that 
that kept them alive. 

By 1917 the Business Woman’s investment was on its last 
legs. It stood, but it stood totteringly, ready to fall whenever 
the word was given. Round about things had not improved. 
The Railway Yards had waxed strong and were kicking hard; 
beyond, there was the apparently limitless expanse of chimney- 
pots and roofs that proved Regalia to be taking her place as 
one of the world’s cities. The cut-rate store at the comer of 


PROLOGUE 


xi 


Drayton Place was growing with the Yards. It had inaug- 
urated a big clock over its door, and every month or so a new 
clerk, as dingy, as polite, as unappetizing as the rest, made his 
appearance: Semple’s Cut-rate Drug-Store was on its way to 
be a thriving business concern. The rest of Drayton Place, 
with the exception of Dufour’s grocery at the St. Hubert 
Boulevard corner, was still composed of small “individual” 
businesses, where the boss did the major part of his own work 
and his wife took in roomers in the house above the shop. 
From the front windows of the Buildings there was dinginess 
to look upon; from the back windows there was an uninter- 
rupted view of other back windows across a triangular court. 
And from both ends of Drayton Place, unceasing, unresting, 
night and day, came the everlasting hum of the electric car-line. 
Noise, grime, squalor; by this great trinity of words did 
Penelope’s Buildings justify its existence. 

One thing, and one thing only, was beautiful to look at. 
From the windows of Drayton Place, and even, slantingly, from 
the windows overlooking O’Neil Street, the tall slender spire 
of St. Patrick’s church was visible. There it was, whenever 
you looked out, shooting, as it seemed from far underneath, 
right into the sky. The rest of the church was invisible; houses 
and shops hid it from Penelope’s Buildings. But the spire — 
constructed in an age when men had more time for their work 
— was there; and high up in the belfry was the bell that 
warned the Penelopians of the flight of hours. Night and day 
the bell broke in on the hum of the street-cars. Each quarter 
of an hour it told solemnly off what had gone before from 
what was yet to come. It spoke of things calm, peaceful, 
eternal. It told of what was to come long after Penelope’s 
Buildings had crumbled into dust, and, in a curious way, it 
told of what had been long before Penelope’s Buildings had 
been thought of. By the sight of the spire, by the sound of the 
bell, and by these things alone, was beauty brought to O’Neil 
Street and Drayton Place. St. Patrick’s, even when it was 
least thought of, dominated the scene. It was there. You 
could not get rid of it. And, when you turned your eyes to it 
from the Yards, from the sight of the big clock over the cut-rate 
store, from the uncleared filth of the street; when you lent 
your ear for a moment to the sound of the deep-toned bell, 
you could not but be conscious that here was something by which 
mere passing life could be regulated; that here was not only 
peace for a moment, but peace for ever, if you chose to make it 


PROLOGUE 


xii 


so. There were those in Penelope’s Buildings who did listen, 
who did find — if it were only for a moment — peace to their 
souls in the chiming of the bell. There was one at least who 
would cry to herself as she waked in the night and turned 
restlessly on her bed, “Glory be to God that He built St. 
Patrick’s here close be me home. For without ut, God help 
me, I’d not be able to go on.” 

The bell of St. Patrick’s did, perhaps, more than it knew. 


/ 

OUR LITTLE LIFE 







































I 























































% 











OUR LITTLE LIFE 


CHAPTER I 

I T was in the late autumn of 1917 that Robert Fulton sat 
writing in a small flat on the O’Neil Street side, three 
floors up in Penelope’s Buildings. He wrote as if he were 
in earnest about what he was doing. Sometimes he would go 
straight ahead, dipping his pen old-fashionedly into the ink- 
pot on the deal table before him; and sometimes he would stop 
and lean his elbow on the table and his head on his hand and 
sit, gazing out of the window — out, over the Railway Yards to 
where he could just see a patch of sky; and then, as the word 
he was in search of came floating to him — down from that patch 
of most beautiful night-sky, perhaps — he would bend over his 
paper again, and get it down. As he did this a very charming 
smile would come to his face. His face would be irradiated by 
the smile, and you would see how nice a person Robert Fulton 
would be, if only he were happy. 

But he wasn’t happy. You had only to look at him to see 
that. There is nothing, of course, to be proud of in being 
unhappy — very much the reverse: yet there are circumstances 
in this life in which it is difficult to be happy and content, 
and Robert Fulton was in the very midst of such circum- 
stances — he was completely tangled up in them. He was a 
creature not made at any time for the acute kind of happiness, 
perhaps ; happiness of that kind is an effervescing draught, and 
Robert Fulton was accustomed to drink the still waters of life. 
Yet it seemed unnecessary for him to have had to come down 
to the dregs of life and have the bitter taste of them in his 
mouth. He could have been happy enough — he could have 
been infinitely content if contentment had come his way: 
as it was, he was drinking dregs. Not only was it unlikely 
now that he would ever taste the definite warm-blooded joys 
of life; it seemed equally unlikely if he would ever know 
contentment again. 

Still, as he sat writing, he was not actively unhappy. This 

3 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


4 

evening part of his life was what he looked forward to all 
day long. When he put his poor key into his shabby door 
and passed into his more than shabby room, he alwa!ys felt 
that he had left a great deal that was actively unpleasant 
behind him. Out in the world where he had to spend his days 
it was nearly all unpleasant. From early in the morning when 
he gently closed his door behind him till the time when he 
undid it at night, nothing agreeable of any kind — except lunch, 
perhaps — ever happened. All day long he was earning his 
living, as almost all of us have to do: and there is nothing 
bad in earning a living — God forbid! But to earn your bread 
by the sweat of your heart; to gain your pence in hour after 
hour of uncongenial labor; to have to be courteous whether 
you like it or not to discourteous and unreasonable people — 
is it clear why Robert Fulton disliked the day? And why, 
as he turned the key in his key-hole and came back into his 
shabby, cold, unattractive room he felt that he had come — 
home? All evening, all night long for that matter, he was 
free to do as he liked. When all is said and done, what we 
all like — what is to all of us the greatest treat in the world — 
is to do as we like. Leave us alone and we’ll all come home — 
sometime. Robert Fulton was no exception to the rule. 

He wrote, bending low over his deal table. This was a 
good evening, evidently. There were nights when the pen 
wouldn’t talk and the paper remained blank; when, if the 
pen were forced to talk, it said the most — banal things. Occa- 
sionally when Robert had driven his pen where it didn’t want 
to go, and he read over what it had written at his dictation 
he was amazed that he — a passably intelligent human creature 
— could write such abominations of nonsense. He was never 
one of those writers who write spontaneously, as it were; 
one of those who, reading later what is written, stop amazed 
that such things should be written by themselves at all. Robert 
Fulton never knew what it was to have feeling run out of him 
and set itself down without let or hindrance in the form of 
words. He had never experienced the strange sensation that 
phrases — even the feelings that mold those phrases into shape 
— have lives of their own. As he read in cold blood what 
he had written down he did not know what it was to feel 
that kind of ingenuous astonishment that a woman feels when 
she sees the child that a little while ago was herself — and 
now is there, parted from her, with a definite life of its own. 
What Robert Fulton wrote he had ripely considered. He thought 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


5 

most of the day, while his hands did the mechanical work 
that was expected of them, what he would write at night. He 
was never surprised , when work went moderately well with 
him, at what he had written. He knew he was going to write 
more or less like that. He had thought it out, even, perhaps, 
to the very form of the words in which he would clothe his 
thought. The sensation of feelings of which he had never 
been conscious surging up (from where?) and writing them- 
selves down, almost in spite of him; the immense joy of 
reading these, of knowing they were his, of realizing that he 
had written down in black and white a part of him that it 
would be impossible to reach by knife or scalpel . . . and 
yet to feel that these words and the emotions they represented 
had a life of their own independent of his: that exquisite 
pleasure Robert Fulton would never know as long as he 
lived. 

Yet out of the other kind of writing, the thought-out, care- 
fully-considered, conscientious work that he did, he got pleas- 
ure. Sometimes when he had managed to transmit to paper, 
in such a way that he thought it might be understood, the 
deep underworld of his own thought, he felt dimly as if he had 
perhaps touched a spot where — it is difficult to put into words 
— he met humanity’s thought. He felt, always dimly, that 
if you get down deep enough into your own underworld, you 
come also to the underworld of other people. That there is 
a communal region where we all feel — and if we feel must 
we not in time think — much alike; and that, in having cleared 
the way an inch or two towards that kingdom of satisfaction — 
contentment — peace, that core of life where sympathy and 
understanding are — he had done something worth doing. Robert 
Fulton had towards his work, in fact, the two-fold attitude that 
conscientious workers feel. He considered with one part of 
him that his work was good (that was the part that recog- 
nized what a trouble it had been to get the work there at all) ; 
and with the other part he was deeply disdainful of it, was sure 
that it was no good, commercially or otherwise, wondered how 
he could be such a fool as to write — and the next night set to 
with undiminished diligence. Probably, however, the chief 
thing about Robert Fulton’s writing was that he enjoyed himself 
while he was doing it. He thoroughly enjoyed himself — in 
his mild way. He even liked resting from his labors and 
poising his slender porcupine-quill pen in his hand and search- 
ing the universe for the right word. There was a deep satis- 


6 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


faction in leaning an elbow on the table and looking up into 
the sapphire night-sky and trying to find the word he wanted 
there. Even a word, if you want it badly enough, may be a 
definite aim in life. To Robert, to whom the world was a 
slippery place, a missing word was a foothold where he could 
perch for a moment and find satisfaction. 

This autumn evening he was unusually deep in his work. 
It was a new piece of work he was beginning, and it happened 
to treat of a subject that went deeper — and climbed up higher — 
than anything he had attempted before. He was quite definitely 
in the thought-region, just trying to transmute into words his 
very definite impressions and opinions. His subject was not 
an emotional one: it was Canada. And Canada is a big 
subject, and Robert Fulton was anxious to rise — and also to 
get down — to his subject. He was finding it a difficult job, 
and he was consequently gazing a good deal more than usual 
into the night-sky. 

The reason he wrote of Canada was because his opinion 
of the Dominion had grown to be such that it must out. He 
had no one to talk to about what he thought; he felt an irre- 
sistible desire to say what he thought to someone or something. 
He was saying it to the piece of cheap paper that lay on the 
deal table before him. Six years before Robert Fulton had 
brought to Canada wares to sell. These wares had been inside 
his head, and without being unduly proud of them, he had 
felt that they ought to be saleable — for something. They hadn’t 
been. Canada would have none of them. And no doubt this 
attitude of Canada to the wares he had wanted (very badly) 
to sell tinged Robert’s attitude to Canada, and made his re- 
flections about her not so impersonal as he thought them. 

Naturally he prided himself on being impartial — we all do; 
and the language he used was impartial: it was the literary 
language which does not permit itself the license of a more red- 
blooded style. Yet, occasionally, behind the well-chosen words 
and the carefully-considered phrases, there was something visible 
that Robert Fulton did not know was there: between the lines, 
as well as behind them, personal sentiment made its appear- 
ance. Had Canada accepted with joy the wares Robert Fulton 
intended her to buy, Robert Fulton’s book would never have 
been written. Had the Dominion taken hold of him, accepted 
him and what he brought, given him what he himself called 
“real” work to do, he would never have wanted to say any- 
thing about her. As it was, he did want to say things. Only 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


7 

half consciously, perhaps, what he was doing as he sat at 
his deal table with the raw glare of the Penelopian gas-light 
streaming down on his paper was making plain his sense of 
injustice against the Dominion. He was oblivious of his sur- 
roundings. He was so engrossed in what he was doing that he 
had for the moment forgotten his feelings in trying to find 
words to express them. Yet for all that he was getting rid of 
a little bit of his spleen against a country that had not used 
him any too well. Robert Fulton was not so impartial as he 
thought he was. 

Canada had not really treated him badly, of course. He had 
no well-founded complaint to bring against her. Yet it is 
hard — well-nigh impossible — to be fond of anything that has 
not known how to use you. Robert Fulton felt that he was 
good for something. He knew that if “they” would set him 
“real” work, he would work; no one harder. But he also 
knew — or thought he did — that the only work he had been able 
to wring out of Canada was not “real” work. Robert Fulton 
served at a cheese-and-butter counter all day long. He handed 
out butter and he weighed off cheese. He told the price of eggs. 
He expatiated on the excellence of the pots of honey that were 
sold at his counter. He urged buying on the customer. He 
counted out change into countless hands. And over and over 
and over again he agreed to the same comments on the same 
weather. “How cold it has been today.” “Yes, Madam,” 
“How long the winter is.” “Yes, Madam.” “Seems as if the 
Spring would never come!” “No, Madam.” Wasn’t that 
enough to drive any man mad? Could any old mythology 
(prolific as it was in thinking of things) invent any torture 
worse than that? Oh, the boredom of it! The unutterable 
ghastly unforgivable boredom! It was, to some extent at least, 
this boredom with his uncongenial way of work that Robert 
Fulton poured into his views on Canada. But he thought that 
he was only writing down exactly what was the fact. He 
thought that, right down to the bottom of the place where rea- 
soning goes. And, down below that, he knew better. 

There are all sorts of ways of looking at Canada, of course, 
just as there are all sorts of ways of looking at everything. 
Canada looks one thing to the unsuccessful immigrant and 
another thing — quite another thing ! — to the successful one : and 
it looks another thing still to the son or the grandson or the 
daughter or the granddaughter of the successful or the unsuc- 
cessful immigrant. Observe that the emphasis must be laid on 


8 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


the “successful” or the “unsuccessful” immigrant. For — and 
this is perhaps where the New World differs a little from the 
Old — the mirror in which you look at things is money. In 
older countries there are things still (not many) which can 
be had without money; but in the new countries there is 
nothing that can be had without money — things unbuyable and 
unsaleable don’t exist there. Sometimes as Robert Fulton was 
walking home at night he would look up at that most beautiful 
of all Canada’s beautiful possessions — her sky: and he would 
think bitterly to himself, “Why, it’s impossible to admire even 
that without money!” He meant that he was either too cold 
(for you can’t buy warm enough wear for the Canadian winters 
on butter and cheese) or too hot (for you can’t provide for 
the Canadian summer comfortably on a similar basis) and 
that therefore he was not physically comfortable enough to . . . 
well, to be artistic, I suppose. It is a nice question just how 
comfortable we need to be for the artist in us to exert him- 
self. Can you be artistic when the thermometer is 24 below 
and an icy wind is blowing and you haven’t a fur coat? Can 
you be artistic while you have a raging tooth-ache? How did 
Shakespeare see the world when he had a tooth-ache? Robert 
Fulton saw the world very much askew when he was too poor 
to be comfortable; a good meal, nicely served, would have 
paved his way to a far keener appreciation of lovely things. 
When he turned into Penelope’s Buildings he felt, every night 
afresh, as if the world was an ugly place, an unworthy place — 
an odious slatternly wicked place. He hated Penelope’s Build- 
ings. How he hated them! And he hadn’t money enough 
to live anywhere else. 

On the whole, these facts probably colored his monograph 
on Canada. 

CHAPTER II 

T HE first thing Robert saw when he waked up the morn- 
ing after his busy evening was a letter slipped under 
the door. He recognized at once the postal service, as 
it plied from one “apartment” (as the Penelopians loved to 
call their flats) of Penelope’s Buildings to another. And, as 
he knew quite well from whom the letter must come, he didn’t 
trouble at first to get up and look inside it. He merely lay 
where he was and lazily contemplated it as it lay on the floor 
with its outer edge still under the door. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


9 

We can judge from Robert Fulton’s way of regarding this 
letter that it was not a very important document — to him. If 
it had been a love-letter he would have been up in an instant, 
pressing it to his bosom; and if it had been that long envelooe 
from the lawyer’s firm, which so many of us pass our lives 
hoping for (and not getting), he would also have been up, not 
pressing it to his bosom but undoing it and taking out what 
was inside with trembling, eager hands. Knowing, as he did, 
that it was a letter from Miss McGee, on the first-floor flat on 
the Drayton Place side, he merely lay in his poor bed regard- 
ing it in the dim light of the October morning. He knew what 
the letter contained. An invitation to something. He said to 
himself that Miss McGee would be asking him in to evening 
“tea” perhaps, or that she would be making some overture for 
the Sunday afternoon. He was glad to get her invitations — 
he didn’t get so many that he could afford to throw away any: 
but he was also aware that these invitations of hers did not 
afford him any special pleasure. He was glad to go to Miss 
McGee’s, as things were; but if things had been otherwise — 
and how he wished they were ! — he wouldn’t have been glad to 
go. And he knew it. 

After a bit he stretched out his hand for his watch; that 
watch, which, like the porcupine-quill pen, had no connection 
at all with the twentieth century. It was a watch wound up 
in the good old way with a key (which went a-missing the 
moment you took your eye off it) and keeping excellent time 
so long as it was not put into the hands of a Canadian watch- 
maker. When Robert’s hand had reached this watch of his 
and he had consulted it, he said “Oh!” — that expressive mono- 
syllable by which those of us who live alone do so much con- 
versation with ourselves. He put the watch back on the table 
beside his bed, and he got up. He didn’t leap up. You 
don’t leap unless you feel in a leaping mood. Robert Fulton 
got up slowly, one leg and one arm at a time, and when he 
was wholly out of bed he stretched and said “Oh!” again — and 
began to dress. He had no bath-room. In Penelope’s Build- 
ings there were no bath-rooms at all. Nobody thought of such 
things. The Penelopians went to their wash-basins as a matter 
of course, and, for better for worse, according to the way they 
were made, they washed themselves clean. Robert Fulton was 
made for better in that particular way. He was not one of 
those Englishmen, conventionalized in the Canadian mind, who 
on their arrival in the Dominion fall from a pinnacle of 


10 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


superfine cleanliness into a bottomless pit of dirt. He had not, 
from sheer desperation, ceased to use a tooth-brush; nor had 
he ceased to brush his hair. His clothes were poor and thread- 
bare — he couldn’t help that; but he brushed them and he 
brushed himself. In spite of the drawbacks of living as he 
did, he remained self-respecting. He looked neat. In so 
far as he could possibly manage it, in short, he triumphed 
over the wash-basin and made it seem as like a bath as he 
could. It was his one heroism. 

It wasn’t until he had got on his suit (which he would have 
to change for a white linen one as soon as he reached the 
store) that he approached the door of his room and stooped 
for the letter. As soon as he had got out of bed he had placed 
his small sauce-pan on the spirit-lamp, and now, before he read 
the letter, he took the tea-pot off the top of the sauce-pan 
(where it had been warming), placed in it the requisite tea- 
spoonful and a half of tea, filled the tea-pot with the boiling 
water, extinguished the lamp : and sat down to breakfast. 
Breakfast is not a complicated meal when you live alone and 
have to get it in a hurry. Robert Fulton’s breakfast con- 
sisted of a cup of tea and a piece of bread (and margarine with 
it) on weekdays all the year round. On Sundays he added to 
this anchorite repast another cup of tea and an egg — or some 
marmalade — or a little honey: and he eked out these delicacies 
with the reading of a book — which on ordinary mornings he 
couldn’t afford to do. His Sunday morning breakfast was 
the pleasantest time of the whole week; and if, as the day 
went on, it proved rather a forlorn and desolate day (as Sun- 
days in a strange land are apt to do), still it was Sunday, and 
that was a great thing. There was no mention of butter or 
cheese from morning till night; and he was not required to talk 
of the weather with anyone. 

The present day was Friday and there was need for hurry. 
Robert Fulton had been five minutes too late in looking at 
his watch. He poured out his cup of tea, and between his 
rapid bites of bread and margarine he took up the letter. It 
was a small tidily-folded piece of paper. No envelope — such 
luxuries were not necessary in the simple postal service of 
Penelope’s Buildings: merely a piece of paper of poor quality, 
tom off a “pad,” folded in three, and addressed in a careful 
illiterate hand, “Mr. Robert Fulton.” 

Robert hastily unfolded it, with a knife in his hand. It 
contained what he had expected, an invitation to “tea.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


11 


“Well,” he thought to himself, “all the better. I’ll go.” He 
went on buttering his bread while he was thinking this. “And,” 
he said to himself suddenly, putting down his knife, “I know 
what I’ll do. I’ll take the manuscript down and read it to 
her.” 

He knew this was a desperate resolution. He was well 
enough aware that what he had been writing the night before 
(for it was of this he was thinking) was above Miss McGee’s 
powers of comprehension. Miss McGee was intelligent, but 
her intelligence had never had a chance to get itself cultivated 
in any way. It was the native thing she had brought into the 
world with her: and Robert Fulton knew very well that what he 
had written the night before needed some cultivated as well 
as some native intelligence to comprehend as well as appreciate 
it. He knew Miss McGee would not understand a great deal 
of what he had written. He also knew he must read what he 
had written to somebody. The time had come to share, and he 
had nobody — nobody on earth — with whom he could share but 
Miss McGee. He had the unlucky artistic streak that demands 
sympathy . . . “She’ll pretend to understand if she doesn’t,” 
he said to himself, definitely showing his artistic streak and 
glancing down at the letter before him; “she’ll pretend — and 
that’ll be something.” He turned the poor little piece of paper 
round, wrote rapidly on the back of it in his legible practised 
hand, “I shall be delighted to come. Thank you. R. F.” — 
and he rose up and washed the breakfast things and put 
them away, made up his bed (for he couldn’t bear to come back 
at night to an untidy room) , seized his hat, took a rapid glance 
round to see that nothing was in too-furious disorder, opened 
the door, went out, locked the door behind him — and made 
off. He ran down-stairs, stopping to slip the return letter under 
Miss McGee’s door as he ran (he ran because he would have 
to pay a fine if he were late and he couldn’t afford fines) : 
and then, making his way out of the front door of Penelope’s 
Buildings, he forged in the direction of the store. “Yes, I’ll 
read it to her,” he thought as he made his way through the 
clear fine transparent morning; “I’ll know she doesn’t under- 
stand, but it’ll be nice of her to try” He knew she would try. 
He knew he would feel grateful to her for doing her best to 
please him. He knew he would even derive some benefit — 
some actual literary help — from the un-understanding warm hu- 
man sympathy Miss McGee would be sure to shower out on him. 
“You gain things from reading aloud anyway,” he further said 


12 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


to himself; and then, once more consulting the watch, he said, 
“Now then, get on. Don’t talk. Hurry. You’ll be late.” 
The thought of the fine began to obscure all other thoughts 
and his pace quickened almost to a run. 

There was a bite in the air as he went through it. The 
trees, which bordered the streets as he got further west, were 
hung with amber and golden leaves. The world looked lovely, 
and it seemed, as it so often unreasonably does, as if it should 
be a lovely and a happy world. Robert Fulton went along 
resolutely, more stoically perhaps than resignedly. He thought 
transitorily of the day before him, and the sensation came over 
him — as it often did — of hanging by his teeth and nails to 
life; and then his thoughts went back to Miss McGee’s poor 
little invitation. “Mr. Fulton,” she had put on the top of 
the paper; and a little lower down, “Will you come to tea to- 
night — 7:30, if you can. I have a chickun.” And then at 
the foot of the paper she had signed “Miss McGee.” “Yes, 
I’ll take the manuscript along,” he said, reverting to the pleas- 
antest thing in sight as he walked through the golden morning. 
“I’ll take it — and read it to her.” And, a moment afterwards, 
he added, “It’ll be something to do.” 

He reached the store, passed through its fine marble portal, 
made his way to the cement back premises, and there changed 
into his professional linen suit and cap. You would hardly 
have recognized him when he was dressed for the day. He 
looked like a salesman; just like any other salesman — except 
for his eyes. But who casts eyes on the eyes of the man selling 
butter and cheese? No one. Robert Fulton took his place 
behind the sanitary glass-covered counter with the white tiled 
wall behind him and the cement floor beneath his feet. He pre- 
pared for his doom. “A beautiful morning!” “Yes, Madam.” 
“I hope we shan’t have rain, eh!” “No, Madam. Did you 
say one pound? We have beautiful honey — just come in.” 
“How much is it a section?” “Forty cents, Madam.” “Oh! 
Well, just pick me a good section, will you ...” 

Robert Fulton’s day had begun. 

CHAPTER III 

T HE acquaintance between Miss McGee and Robert Fulton 
had formed itself in the most casual manner. One day 
Robert had encountered Miss McGee on the stairs. He was 
going, after his day’s work, up to his solitary room; and Miss 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


13 


McGee, who had returned a little earlier from her work, was 
struggling up the stairs as well as she could in front of him 
with a bag of coal in her arms. She looked bent and frail and 
unable to cope with such work; and Robert, without giving 
himself time for reflection, had run up the stairs that divided 
him from her, and lifting his hat, as Miss McGee said after- 
wards, “like a gen’leman,” had offered to carry her burden up 
the rest of the way. Miss McGee had faltered and blushed 
(not at being spoken to by a “gen’leman” but because she was 
“caught” in the actual carrying-out of one of her shifts of 
poverty) ; it was a little time before she gave way, but in the 
end she had allowed him to carry her coal for her — even 
allowed him to carry it into her flat: and no one in Penelope’s 
Buildings, except Miss Healy from her garret-room at the top 
of the Building and Mrs. Morphy from the other side of the 
court, had ever been allowed to cross Miss McGee’s threshold. 
Miss McGee was a great believer in keeping oneself to one- 
self and not having truck with the neighbors. But when Robert 
Fulton at the door of her “apartment” had said to her in 
that quiet way of his that rarely awakened opposition, “Let me 
carry it in for you,” she had not said no. He penetrated right 
into the very fastness of Miss McGee’s kitchenette (a black 
hole of a cupboard which she dignified by that name), dumped 
the coal there, and made his way out again. After that Miss 
McGee and Robert Fulton “bowed” when they met on the 
stairs ; and occasionally one of them would say “a frosty night,” 
or “a lovely morning,” as the case might be — and the subject of 
the weather, approached in this way, seemed to one of them 
less repellent than usual. 

Miss McGee in a rather lonely life was not accustomed to 
having much done for her; and this incident of the coal, when 
something had been done, stuck in her mind. She thought 
about it a great deal. On her way to work it would come 
into her mind and she would ponder over it. When she was 
“doing out” her flat, either before she went out in the morning 
or after she came home at night, it would cross her brain and 
she would entreat it to stay. Sometimes when she was lying in 
bed unable to sleep (she was not a remarkable sleeper) she 
would lie and think of Mr. Fulton two flats up on the O’Neil 
Street side, and wonder about him and his family and how he 
came to be where he was. “He’s the round peg in the square 
hole be-lieve we,” said Miss McGee to herself — her sharp eyes 
had seen at once that Robert was a misfit where he was. “Sure, 


H 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


I wonder where he comes from,” she would further say to her- 
self. “I wonder what his fam’ly eh’ll be loike. I wonder what’s 
brought um here.” Miss McGee’s wonders on the subject of 
Robert Fulton were great and inextinguishable, so it is not 
surprising, perhaps, that an acquaintance so casually begun, 
should have gradually ripened into something like a friendship ; 
let a woman wonder enough about a man and the acquaintance 
may end anywhere. The desire to be acquainted was mainly 
on Miss McGee’s side, it is true; but when she made over- 
tures — quite nice and modest overtures — Robert did not rebuff 
them. He submitted to them — welcomed them indeed: even a 
Miss McGee is an oasis in the desert when you are in a large 
city with no one to talk to and nowhere to go. 

After slight interchanges of civility on the stairs came slight 
invitations to “come in a minnut.” The minnut lengthened it- 
self, perhaps, into half an hour: then sundry unlooked-for 
meetings in the street ripened the acquaintance: and then Miss 
McGee took her courage into her two hands and said one day, 
“Would ye drink a cup o’ tea with me Sunday, eh?” — and 
Robert had gone. The first step is, we know, the step that 
counts. After the first visit came a second: gradually it had 
become a matter of course that no week should go by without 
Robert Fulton paying some visit two floors down — and drinking 
tea there. 

These tea-drinkings were resting-places in Miss McGee’s 
busy life. She was as busy as Robert himself, and engaged in 
just as uncongenial work. She was “a woman who went out 
sewing by the day.” She left her home betimes in the morn- 
ing and reached her customer’s house at 8:30. Then she sat 
down to a breakfast, sometimes nice and sometimes nasty, ac- 
cording to the house she happened to be working in. Some- 
times she had her breakfast by herself in the dining-room (at 
the same table that the family had already taken breakfast 
at) and sometimes she had it in the kitchen with the maids. 
Sometimes she went straight to the work-room, and her break- 
fast was brought in to her there on a t^ay. And when that 
was the case the lady of the house usually accompanied the 
tray in order to evolve her views. There is nothing about 
which even the best women are less conscientious than their 
clothes. They all want to be well-dressed. Sooner than throw 
away a thing when it is worn out, seven women out of ten / 
will hire a woman to rip it and sew it up again, and to what 
such women expect — both from the garment and from the woman 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


15 

in by the day — there is no boundary-line. An aged petticoat 
will cut up well into an evening gown; an evening-gown can 
become a mantle: a mantle can be turned into a kimono — 
their husbands’ old pyjamas can be “arranged” (a great word 
of Miss McGee’s) as “dainty little house-gowns” for the morn- 
ing. Miss McGee’s was a difficult position. She needed the 
address and the balance of a ballet-dancer and the astuteness 
and slippery eloquence of a diplomatist to keep up with her 
customers’ views. But she managed it. While she sat sipping 
her cup of tea or coffee at half past eight in the morning, 
she would watch the lady of the house spreading out the 
garment that was to become something else, and she would 
deliver her judgment. First she would take a corner of the 
material in her hand and feel it. “A foine stuff, sure,” she 
would say. “Pre-War that, Madam.” (She too said Madam.) 
“We must do our best with that. . . And slowly and re- 
gretfully she would let the piece of stuff slide out of her 
hand, and return to her tea. This put the lady (any lady) into 
a good temper and paved the way to telling her later what 
couldn’t be done. 

In her life Miss McGee had wrought many a transformation. 
Many an odd bit and scrap had she “worked up” (another of 
her expressions) into something elegant — or “darling” as she 
said. She would turn and fit, snip here, round a comer there; 
she would patiently sit, hour after hour, trying the effect of 
this — of that: she would rip — and join . . . make a little 
unnecessary ornament to hide the join: and then at the end she 
would say to the lady, “I’m ready for you now, Madam,” or 
“Mrs. So-and-So,” according to the length of time she had 
worked for her: and together they would go into the customer’s 
bed-room, and there, before the long mirror, Miss McGee would 
“fit” her customer. She would kneel on the floor grading the 
hem of the skirt. She would reach up and pin and unpin and 
pin again, arranging and rearranging the bodice, and then, 
from her kneeling posture on the ground, she would look up and 
say with her mouth full of pins, “How’s that, Madam? How 
does that strike you, Mrs. So-and-So?” And at an indication 
from Madam, a wave of the hand from Mrs. So-and-So, the 
whole thing would have to be undone again, and Miss McGee 
would be back where she was in the early morning. And the 
lady, conscious that her dollar and a half was running to waste, 
would become snappish and cross. “Can’t you fix it, McGee,” 
she would ask: and at lunch, perhaps, she would say to her 


i6 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


daughter, “I guess McGee’s going some awf, my dear. She 
don’t seem as if she could stick a pin straight this morning.” 

Lunch-time was Miss McGee’s moment of deliverance. There 
again it depended on what house she was working in what 
lunch she got. Sometimes she went down and shared the serv- 
ants’ lunch — and that was usually comfortable. Sometimes she 
went in with “the family” to lunch — and that was usually 
constrained. Sometimes the tray was Once more brought into 
the work-room, and Miss McGee cleared a space amidst the 
remnants on the table and the threads and pickings on the 
floor, and ate her midday meal amidst these ruins of Carthage. 
The worst of this arrangement was that the lady, hot on some 
new evolution-theory, usually came back into the room before 
the lunch was finished, and watched Miss McGee rapidly 
swallowing her little mess of pudding or hurriedly munching 
her cake. “Through, Miss McGee?” the lady would sweetly 
ask perhaps. “Oh, yes, Madam,” Miss McGee would reply; 
and then, while the lady carried off the tray, Miss McGee 
would shake the crumbs off her lap and move back to her work- 
ing-seat, and for the rest of the afternoon, without one minute’s 
rest or grace, she would continue making something out of 
something else. 

At about five a lonely tea-pot on a tray would make its ap- 
pearance; at six she would rise and shake herself and take off 
her apron and begin to fold up her work, and then the lady 
would say, “Oh, Miss McGee, I wonder would you mind looking 
at this.” And from some unexpected place of concealment 
she would produce something entirely and utterly new — or 
rather, not new but up to that moment unrevealed; and Miss 
McGee, standing on one leg and shivering with eagerness to 
be off, would have to stand and watch — finger the stuff, pro- 
nounce it excellent — listen to all the lady’s thoughts and aspira- 
tions . . . she was lucky if she got away without the lady trying 
it on, or hunting out the pattern for the thing it was destined 
to become and laying it on the pattern to see if it would make 
it. . . . 

If Robert Fulton had something to complain of in the world’s 
commercialism, what about Miss McGee? Robert Fulton, if 
the worst came to the worst, could leave his firm and try an- 
other one; but Miss McGee couldn’t leave her customers. She 
couldn’t venture to refuse to go to one of them — she dared not 
offend the least of them. For if she did, that customer would 
make it a point of honor to go round all Miss McGee’s other 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


17 


customers with whom she was acquainted and say to them, 
“Say, you know that McGee. there, eh? Well, she done the 
most ah-ful thing!” And the other customers would believe 
every word and begin to look for another woman who went 
sewing by the day — and Miss McGee’s profession would be 
gone. The sword of Damocles hung over her head every 
minute of every working day. It was the sword that made 
her agreeable to her customers. She was agreeable. In some 
houses they wanted her to be quiet — there she sat and sewed. 
In other houses they wanted her to amuse them, talk, gossip — 
there she chatted. In other houses still she was required to 
listen while the lady streamed on all day long — and then Miss 
McGee sat as mum as a mouse. Sometimes people offered to 
“help,” and Miss McGee’s heart sank. Sometimes they sent 
the housemaid up to sew and the housemaid was saucy. Some- 
times the baby had to be fitted, and the baby cried and was 
naughty. And in all these circumstances Miss McGee was 
expected to be perfection: when they had done their worst by 
her all she could do was to put on her hat and say, “Good 
evening, Madam. Thank you, Madam,” and go away. Day 
after day she ended what other people had begun and began 
what other people were to end. There was nothing she hadn’t 
done — or tried to do. In her time she had made a ball-dress 
out of the kitchen dusters; she had “turned” sheets, when work 
was slack; she had fitted out maids in aprons and alpaca 
dresses; she had fixed over many a “model gown” that her 
ladies had bought at bargain sales. Ever since she had learned 
her business more than thirty years before (she had been a 
“trotter” at twelve and now she was forty-six) she had been 
doing these things and a thousand things more: and all this 
she expected to go on doing until the day when she should 
be carried out of the Buildings feet first, as she said — with 
her heart at rest at last. 

It wasn’t a bright life and it wasn’t an interesting life, but 
Miss McGee made the best of it. It had gone on such a long 
time that she was used to it. She had forgotten — almost — what 
it meant to be riotously happy. She had forgotten — almost — 
the fresh days of her youth and the hope that had filled her 
heart then. She had grown accustomed to leaving Penelope’s 
Buildings at eight o’clock or a little sooner and to coming 
back there at seven o’clock or a little later. She regarded the 
Buildings as “home.” She was glad to get back there. 

On the day when she had pushed the letter under Robert 


i8 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Fulton’s door, Miss McGee came home a little bit later than 
usual. She had had a trying day. The lady she had been 
working for was one of her oldest customers, a Mrs. Barclay of 
Wellston Road. Miss McGee did not dislike her in general, 
in fact she liked her: there had been a time in the far-back 
past when Mrs. Barclay had known how to be kind and 
thoughtful, and a true friend. But this did not prevent her 
from being excessively irritating at times. She was, when 
the fit took her, what Miss McGee was accustomed to call “a 
moral blister.” This had been one of the days. On Miss 
McGee’s arrival in the morning she had found a heterogeneous 
mass and mess of clothes awaiting her. Mrs. Barclay seemed 
to have unearthed all the clothes she had ever had — she was 
one of the older-fashioned kind who preserved everything in 
case it might “come in useful sometime.” Out of the mess three 
gowns were segregated on the couch of the work-room: and 
while Miss McGee was at breakfast (with the family) Mrs. 
Barclay had tried to recall to her memory the three gowns in 
succession, and how exquisite each had been. And Miss McGee 
had gone steadily on with her breakfast, while Mr. Barclay 
from the head of the table (a great favorite of Miss McGee’s 
and “a thorough gen’leman as ever lived”) had repeatedly said, 
“Mother, mother, get on with your breakfast, and talk of the 
gowns when ye’ve finished yer meal.” 

All day long Miss McGee had sat ripping the gowns. She 
knew that ripping was not the worst of it for, when they were 
ripped, she had to make them up into one “new” gown: and 
how she was to do it she did not know. It is work like that 
that makes the heart sick. She was on sufficiently good terms 
with Mrs. Barclay to say what she thought, and she had said 
what she thought, and Mrs. Barclay hadn’t liked it. Lunch in 
consequence had not been a pleasant meal. Tea had been 
drunk in the state of bottled-up irritation that dislocates the 
soul. Miss McGee and Mrs. Barclay had parted coldly — though 
Miss Barclay had come running with a pot of jam at the 
last — and this distressed Miss McGee, for she liked Mrs. 
Barclay and remembered a hundred proofs of her goodness. 
“For the sake of Mike,” she said to herself as she made her 
way back to Penelope’s Buildings, “what do they think I’m 
made of, eh! Good lines! How could I? How could anybody? 
Why, she’s old!” And she went along in a loitering listless 
fashion quite unlike her usual brisk business-like gait. She felt 
discouraged — tired inside and out. She hardly noticed even the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


19 

radiant gold and amber leaves that had lighted Robert Fulton’s 
way in the morning. 

As she turned into Drayton Place, however, and saw the 
Buildings standing before her, she brightened. The thought 
that Robert Fulton was coming to tea with her flashed sud- 
denly into her mind — and she smiled. “My,” she said to her- 
self, glancing at the big clock over the cut-rate drug-store at 
the corner, “I’m all behind toime. I shall only do ut ef I 
hurry-rush.” And forthwith she began to hurry-rush. She 
went across the street at the double, passed through the dark, 
dank entrance to the Buildings, hurried over the little ill-kept 
passage-way that led to the stairs, and set her foot on the 
metal inset of the first wooden step. “Sure,” she said to her- 
self, “I wouldn’t for a million have um come and me not 
fixed.” She quickened her pace till she was running up stairs, 
feeling as she ran in her little wrist-bag for her big door-key; 
when she had pushed her key into the old, worn key-hole 
and opened her door, it looked black and dark, and it smelled 
cold and close. “Oh my!” Miss McGee said to herself. She 
felt for the matches where she always left them on the table, 
lighted the gas, ran to the window, glanced once more at the 
clock, pulled down the shade. “Sure,” she said, “I’ll do 
ut. But I’ll only just do ut, God help me.” And then once 
more she said, “I’d not have um come an’ catch me fer ...” 
And, still in her coat and hat, she knelt down at the fireplace 
to make her fire. The thought of Mrs. Barclay and her three 
gowns in one and the pot of jam Miss Barclay had pushed 
into her hand as she was coming away faded out of her 
mind. “Sure, she thinks she’ll make ut up to me with jam, 
eh!” was what she had said as she left Wellston Road, and 
it was with an effort that she had not thrown the jam into 
the gutter. Now she was smiling and radiant as she knelt 
in the cold ill-lighted room making up the fire that was to 
welcome Robert Fulton. “It’s good to have comp’ny cornin’,” 
she said to herself, “sure, it’s noice not to have to spend me 
evenin’ alone.” She looked perfectly happy as she rose from 
her knees, and the fire crackled and spat as if it were happy 
too. “I’ll put um there,” Miss McGee said to herself, survey- 
ing the table, “it’s the warmest cor’rner . . .” 

The thought that she had to tidy herself as well as her 
house made her hurry still more. “I must give me hair a wave,” 
she thought as she set his knife and fork and laid the little 
paper table-napkin by the side of them. “It makes the differ- 


20 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


ence in ye . . — and she looked ten years younger than 

she had done three hours before when they had been trying 
on the first rough sketch of the three gowns in one before the 
mirror and Mrs. Barclay had said, “Guess you ain’t fixed ut 
good, McGee. You ain’t caught the idea” Miss McGee had 
looked an old woman then: it had taken all her good feeling 
of years gone by to prevent her saying, “Take yer idea and make 
ut yerself.” Now, as she went bustling about her “apart- 
ment” she looked, not young perhaps, but a good deal less 
than her age. She was happy. Mrs. Barclay had faded into 
nothingness. 


CHAPTER IV 

W HEN Robert Fulton knocked gently (he was very quiet 
in all his ways) at the door of Miss McGee’s apart- 
ment and Miss McGee, after opening the door, stood on 
her threshold welcoming him in, you could never have told 
that she had been in a hurry at any time of her life. She 
looked quite composed, and as if she had never had any other 
occupation than to sit waiting his arrival, in her best dress. For 
she had managed, not only to wave her hair, but to “slip 
into,” as she put it, her little summer-gown — a relic from 
some friendly customer’s wardrobe, and relegated to Miss Mc- 
Gee when the friendly customer was tired of it. Miss McGee 
was not good-looking. In her best days of girlhood she had 
never been that. But she had had, in those faraway days of 
youth, a certain beaute de diable; and she retained of that 
some traces still. Her hair, black in her girlhood, had turned 
that charming silvery-white which black hair does turn. It 
had remained as abundant as it had always been — and Miss 
McGee knew how to dress it becomingly and make the best 
of it. She waved it in the front (when she had time) and she 
always drew it droopingly from her forehead to the back where 
she “did it up” in thick simple coils. Yes, Miss McGee’s 
hair was a distinct acquisition. Her eyes were remarkable. 
They were eyes that you would have looked at anywhere — 
large, lustrous, deep blue in color (they looked black in some 
lights) and fringed with long dark lashes. From those eyes 
Miss McGee might have been a Saint — or a genius — or a 
devil. It all depended from what angle you saw them what 
opinion you might form. And here ended — if you except 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


21 


a soft fine-textured sallow skin — all Miss McGee’s claims to 
beauty. Her nose was ugly; too large and too thick-set. Her 
mouth was so ugly as sometimes to strike you as almost re- 
pulsive. It was thick-lipped and coarse . . . and yet, oddly 
enough, sometimes, when Miss McGee would smile, you could 
swear that it was a lovely mouth. Miss McGee’s physical 
body was a mass of contradictions from one end of it to the 
other. She had a figure that always had been full and now 
was stoutish; in her early girlhood she had served, in the 
firm in which she had learned her business, as model for the 
small, full-busted type of gown. Now she was past all that. 
She had neat legs still, however, and the shape of foot that 
;ives a springy gait to its owner. The last contradiction about 
liss McGee was her hand — a beautiful hand — a charming 
' and, soft, small, white, dimpled. If Miss McGee was proud 
* >f anything in the world it was of her hand; and nothing 
ave her keener distress than to see this hand of hers in the 
l rasp of rheumatism. She regarded each swelling of each 
joint as a personal insult. She mourned over the shapelessness 
that ensued. “I’d used to have the pretty hand,” she would say 
pathetically, “you wouldn’t think it now — but it was pretty 
And at such times her large blue-black eyes would grow soft 
a d mournful, and for the moment you would say that Miss 
k cGee was beautiful. But she had never struck Robert Fulton 
that way. He was inexperienced for his years and not very 
noticing of such things as women (he hadn’t had much to do 
whh them) and to him Miss McGee was merely an elderly 
feminine thing who asked him into tea in a room that was 
pleasanter than his own. 

Miss McGee’s room had no business to be pleasanter than 
Robert Fulton’s. It had no intrinsic advantages of its own. But 
Miss McGee had what is called “a way with her.” Partly by 
dint of long experience, but more by native talent, she was able 
to make a very little go a very long way. Her room, full of 
nothing at all that was pretty, looked comfortable. It looked 
home-like. The way that Miss McGee pulled down her blind 
and drew her shabby curtain, the way she arranged her poor 
little sticks of furniture, the exquisite cleanliness that she 
kept (no one in Penelope’s Buildings made a better use of 
a hand-basin than Miss McGee) shed a glow of warmth and 
comfort over her home-life: and it was pleasanter to come 
into Miss McGee’s one sitting-room than to go into many 
halls of the great (as they used to be called) where you would 


22 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

have champagne for dinner and a man in livery to pour it 
out for you. 

“Come in,” said Miss McGee. “Come right in, Mr. Fulton. 
Tm ready for ye — I was just wishin’ ye would come.” 

She stood in her little black and white summer-gown with 
her waved silvery hair and her ugly mouth curved into a 
beautiful smile, and she looked — nice. Robert Fulton came in, 
rather awkwardly as was his way (for he was self-conscious), 
and put his hat and the little manuscript he had brought 
with him down on the window-sill, and came over to the fire. 

“Sit down,” said Miss McGee, “sit right down, and I’ll make 
the tea. Did ever ye hear ut called ‘maskin’ the tea’?” she 
went on conversationally. “Ma’a — my mother, that is — used 
to call ut that.” 

And she put three generous teaspoonfuls of tea into her 
crockery tea-pot and poured the steaming water over the tea as 
if she loved doing it. 

“It’s — it’s a Scotch expression, isn’t it?” said Robert Fulton 
— still awkwardly. He was always awkward till he had got 
rid of his self-consciousness, and then, when he had got rid 
of that, he would open out his petals like a flower — expand, 
till sometimes he showed his heart. 

“It wasn’t Scotch my mother spoke,” said Miss McGee. “She 
was Irish to the bone. Ma’a came out from Ireland,” Miss 
McGee continued, “but she brought Ireland with her. Yes, Sir. 
And she brought up me and me sister Irish, and we’re Irish 
to this day. I’m Irish,” said Miss McGee fiercely, as if 
Robert Fulton were denying the fact. “I’m Irish. Make no 
mistake. . . .” 

“Yes, I know,” Robert Fulton said, beginning to lose his 
self-consciousness. “I know. Nobody could doubt it,” — and 
he laughed. “But,” he went on, “don’t you know that lots of 
Irish and Scotch expressions are the same. What part of Ire- 
land did your mother come from,” he asked — “the North?” 

“Yes, Sir, the North,” said Miss McGee. “Ma’a came out 
from a farm in Ballyhoochlan — near Tyrone there. There’s a 
young man rooming at Mrs. Morphy’s now,” Miss McGee con- 
tinued, “and what do you think he calls me? ‘Black North!’ ” 
Miss McGee laughed. All the fighting blood seemed suddenly 
to have run out of her. “What do you think of that for 
gall, eh? He’s the South himself, and, when he’s out of the 
drink, he’s a nice young man. But he’s always drunk. . . .” 

“And now, come to the table,” Miss McGee said — and sud- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


23 

denly into her voice there had come a sort of undercurrent of 
pride. “Draw in your chair, Mr. Fulton. We’ll have the tea 
now, and you’ll excuse all the shortcomin’s, I know, for ye’re 
used to ’em.” 

Again in her voice there was that undercurrent of pride, 
and, in response to it, perhaps, Robert Fulton glanced at the 
table. Up to now he had noticed nothing. He was com- 
pletely inobservant and at the same time keenly perceptive. 
No one could be less deceived by the atmosphere of the place 
he was in, and no one would be able to tell you less of the 
actual details that went to make up the whole. Up to this 
moment he had been basking in the warmth of the fire (which 
had burned up very creditably in its short space of life) and 
had been content to anticipate, as it were, the on-coming of tea. 
If you had asked him what Miss McGee had on or what her 
hair looked like, or whether the table was well-laid or ill- 
laid, or what was actually on the table, he could have told you 
almost nothing. But had you wished to know other things — 
things far less easy to put into words — Robert Fulton could 
have passed on to you all sorts of perceptions — feelings — what 
can one call them? He had grasped nothing of his sur- 
roundings but he had apprehended everything. 

At the undercurrent of pride in Miss McGee’s voice, how- 
ever, he glanced at the table; and there he saw spread a feast 
of unprecedented splendor. There was a chicken — the “chickun” 
mentioned in Miss McGee’s note: and there was salad, neatly 
arranged on two plates, one for each of them: and there was 
a bowl of “boiled dressing” (that transatlantic delicacy). There 
were two potatoes in their jackets which Miss McGee was 
just taking out of the pot; and there was an apple pie. 

Such a feast as that was a rare thing for both of them. Miss 
McGee, indeed, at some of the houses she worked at fared 
pretty well. But in her own house she fared sparely; and 
as to Robert Fulton, he never fared well at all. 

When, therefore, he saw this Lord Mayor’s banquet in 
private life spread out before him, and smelt the fragrance of 
the tea as Miss McGee poured it into the cups, he couldn’t 
refrain from looking intently at her; and when Miss McGee, 
lifting her mysterious eyes (they looked lovely at the moment) 
from the pouring of the tea met his — something for the first 
time passed between them. So much can a chicken and salad 
and potatoes and an apple pie do. 

“It’s a present a lady-customer made me,” Miss McGee said, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


24 

coloring faintly. “She’s an old customer, and she’s good to 
me. Will ye car-rve the chickun, Mr. Fulton?” 

Miss McGee spoke a confusion of tongues. It was pos- 
sible for her to relapse into Irish completely, and this she 
did in moments of great emotion, or sometimes on rather 
inappropriate occasions, to prove that she was Irish. “It’s the 
Irish in me,” she was accustomed to say when she did anything 
that was unusually trying to the onlooker. In a general way 
she spoke Canadian — a language impossible to indicate by 
means of print. Sometimes she would begin in Canadian and 
end in Irish ; sometimes she would float an Irish intonation into 
the midst of a wholly transatlantic way of speech — it cannot 
be set down. Her way of speaking at any rate was one of 
her attractions. She had refinement^-God knows where she got 
it ! — when she liked ; and she had — when she liked — an extreme 
coarseness of speech. But this Robert Fulton did not hear. 
When she spoke of the chicken she was sensibly affected, and 
so she had a slight relapse into her native tongue. “Will ye 
car-rve the chickun, Mr. Fulton,” said she, and for the moment 
it might have been one of her ancestresses speaking — one who 
had never left the emerald beauties of her native isle. 

Mr. Fulton carved the chicken, and he carved it well. He 
had neat hands, and he did things compactly. “White meat, 
Miss McGee?” said he. 

“I’ll take a mixture of the two, Mr. Fulton, if you please,” 
said Miss McGee, “and help yerself good ” 

They supped royally. They ate the chicken and the salad 
and the potatoes in their jackets, and they drank the tea. 
And then they went on to the apple-pie, and they ate that. 
The bread was good — the lady Samaritan had lined the bot- 
tom of the basket with some home-baked rolls: altogether 
Robert Fulton hadn’t had such a good meal as that for a very 
long time past, and he enjoyed every bite. Miss McGee en- 
joyed her own meal, but she enjoyed yet more seeing Robert 
Fulton open out and become expansive and almost confidential. 
There is something pathetic in what a good meal will do; it 
was such a treat to Robert Fulton to see a table spread even 
as poor Miss McGee could spread it, and to sit down to a 
meal all ready-prepared and merely to eat it that he couldn’t 
help rising to the occasion. He sat in the warmest corner that 
Miss McGee had selected for him, and he ate his “tea” and 
basked in the rays of the fire, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. 
The ugliness of Miss McGee’s room (it was thoroughly ugly), 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


25 

the wicked design of the wall-paper, the criminal shade of 
the window-curtain, the vicious coloring of the rug ... all 
these things he failed to see. He only felt warm and com- 
fortable and comforted— and grateful. And Miss McGee (who 
had perceptions too) knew that he was feeling like that and, 
in response to his feelings, became younger every minute. There 
seemed no reason, at the rate at which she was going, why 
she should not become a young girl before the evening was 
over — and what would have happened then! 

When they had eaten all they could and before Miss McGee 
“cleared away” they sat a little bit and talked. “When did 
your mother come over, Miss McGee,” said Robert Fulton, 
who had never “wondered” at all about Miss McGee and 
therefore did not hesitate to ask a harmless question when he 
wanted to. 

“Ma’a came over when I was a child,” said Miss McGee. 
“I w r as a babe in ar’rums when she landed here, Mr. Fulton. 
And me sister was six.” 

“Have you ever been back?” said Robert Fulton. 

Miss McGee shook her head. “I’ve never saw no country 
but Canada,” she said, “barrin’ the United States on a trip I 
made. But it’s Ireland I’d like to see,” she said, her voice 
growing suddenly passionate. “It’s Irish I am, and it’s Ireland 
is me country. Me mother used to tell me of the green grass 
and the kindly people and the way the McGees lived there.” 

Miss McGee sat looking at the fire a minute. 

“I want you to understand,” she said then, and her voice 
had suddenly become dark and grave, “the McGees go back so 
far you can’t trace them. There was a McGee in Ballyhoochlan 
before the time of Our Lord . . . and God knows what he 
believed,” said Miss McGee. 

She stopped a minute and looked intently at the fire. 

“So that’s some family, eh, to live up to in a strange land,” 
she said after a bit, raising her eyes to Robert’s. “Ye can’t 
feel, Mr. Fulton, ye have all that behind ye and not try an’ 
live up to ut . . .” 

Robert said nothing. 

“There’s times at night,” said Miss McGee, “I’ll dream of 
that green Irish grass me mother used to ta’alk about. ‘Katie,’ 
she’d say, ‘there ain’t the like of ut in Canada. The Irish 
grass is Irish, and I’m Irish an’ you’re Irish — and never forget 
ut.’ I ain’t never forgot ut,” said Miss McGee. She stopped 
again. “The name of the McGees is known far an’ wide at 


26 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Ballyhoochlan,” she said. “Why, me mother used to tell me 
that for ten miles around ye had only to speak the name of 
McGee and they’d honor ye.” 

Still Robert Fulton said nothing. It wasn’t that he didn’t 
feel sympathetic, but Miss McGee’s remarks made him feel 
awkward and he couldn’t think of anything to say. 

“Ma’a came over here the young widow she was,” Miss 
McGee went on. “She came out here with me in her ar’rums, 
and me father dead before I got meself born, and she left the 
old farm behind her that had went to me father’s brother and 
he not kind to her. “Ah I” said Miss McGee, “it was a sore 
heart me mother brought to Canada. She was but a young girl, 
and she come to join her brother here, and when she landed 
she found um married and his wife not wantin’ her ...” 

Miss McGee gazed into the midst of the glowing fire and 
heaved a big sigh. 

“ ’Tis a hard thing life,” she said, “and a sad world. But 
there’s a better one cornin’, Mr. Fulton.” 

Once more Robert Fulton said nothing. He felt this sub- 
ject inspire him even less than the last. He felt by no means 
so sure as Miss McGee that a better world was awaiting him 
when he had finished with the butter-and-cheese counter. 
He knew that Miss McGee was a fervent Catholic and that 
the nearness of St. Patrick’s was one secret of the attachment 
she felt for Penelope’s Buildings. 

“It’s the next world ye think of as ye git on in this,” Miss 
McGee pursued. “There’s not much to this world — barrin’ the 
beauty of ut. But the next world’ll be more beautiful, and 
there’ll be peace in ut as well.” 

Miss McGee stopped once more, and Robert Fulton felt it 
“laid upon him,” as they say in Scotland, to say something. 

“Yes,” he said awkwardly, “I suppose so.” 

Robert Fulton had never believed anything very fervently. 
He hadn’t been brought up to anything beyond the ordinary 
orthodox thing; and his school-days and his years at the uni- 
versity (for he had been three years at College in England) 
together with a whole-hearted addiction to books of every sort 
and kind, had successfully undermined anything he had been 
originally taught in the religious line, and left him with noth- 
ing. He didn’t think much about any world at all — except 
this one; and when he thought of this one it was chiefly to find 
fault with it. Miss McGee’s ardent acceptance of life on a 
Catholic basis was incomprehensible to him. He didn’t under- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


27 

stand her feeling to the Church, the priests, the nuns (what 
education she had received had been in a Convent). The way 
she slipped into the church every morning on her way to her 
work seemed to him picturesque: no more than that. He was, 
not so much incapable of understanding, as not ripe for under- 
standing, the passionate sense of protection this gave her; how 
she was able to go to her work, strengthened — armored from ill 
— by her little bit of broken prayer before one of the tawdry 
altars at St. Patrick’s. He was unwilling to enter on any 
discussion as to religion. He didn’t want to discuss at any 
time with Miss McGee (who would be irritating in a discus- 
sion he felt sure) ; and especially to-night, when he was warmed 
and comforted by her chicken and tea, he wouldn’t for any- 
thing have hurt her feelings. He therefore said in a half-assent- 
ing kind of way, “Yes. I suppose so” — and left the conversa- 
tion there. 

“But you like Canada, don’t you?” he said, taking up after 
a minute a new branch of the subject. “You’re happy here?” 

Miss McGee gave a little laugh. 

“Oh yes, I’m happy,” she said. “I’m as happy as I de- 
serve.” 

And she left it at that. 

She was quite aware of the gulf that divided them. She 
knew that Mr. Fulton was “a gentleman” and that she wasn’t 
“a lady.” She recognized at once the difference life had put 
between them. She couldn’t have told you how she knew; but 
she did know. She also knew that there were some things 
that there would be no good explaining to Mr. Fulton. He 
wouldn’t understand. Her life and how she lived her life 
was one of these things: and she didn’t try to explain it. 
“Oh yes,” she said, “I’m happy enough. I’m as happy as 
I deserve.” And she rose and began to remove the tea things. 

She was deft in her movements. She did things so that it 
was a pleasure to watch her. She gathered together the plates 
and the cups and saucers and the knives and forks and spoons 
and she put them away on the shelf ,in the “kitchenette” — to be 
washed after Mr. Fulton went away. Then she folded up the 
cloth and put it into the drawer of the table they were sitting 
at (it was a plain deal kitchen table with no pretensions to 
anything except economy) ; and as a climax to all this she re- 
spread the table with a cover almost more unspeakably hideous 
than anything else in the room. It all took her five minutes 
or so, and then she sat down again with her little bit of 


28 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

work in her hands. “I’ll leave you to make up the fire, Mr. 
Fulton,” she said. 

This was meant by Miss McGee as the last concession to 
friendliness. To no one on earth except Robert Fulton (though 
Robert had no idea of this) would she have said such a thing. 
When she said, “I leave you to make up the fire,” she meant, 
“Anything and everything you choose to do will be accepted by 
me.” She watched him take the poker and lean forward and 
make up the fire (he did it as neatly as he had carved the 
chicken), and in watching him she felt a deep luxurious pleas- 
ure. She didn’t frame her pleasure into words, even to herself. 
She didn’t say, even to herself, “How nice if he were here to 
do that always!” She merely watched him from under her 
long dark eye-lashes and felt the luxury of the moment. She 
ceased to feel alone in the world as she watched the masculine 
hands busy with her fire. Something consoling seemed to 
come into her life, and, for the moment, the next world ceased 
to be the aim and goal of this one. This world could be 
very sweet — so Miss McGee felt — so sweet that one would 
hesitate to leave it. One might cling to it — love it — care for 
it inexpressibly. 

“So you’re not a Canadian,” Robert Fulton said, re-seating 
himself in his chair. “You’re Irish born.” 

“I’m Irish born,” Miss McGee answered, choking back a little 
sigh that her happy moment was over. “I’m Irish born — sure 
thing. Me sister remembers Ireland,” Miss McGee went on, “or 
says she does. She says it’s a lovely place with rivers and 
streams and the rain always failin’ ...” 

She paused. 

“Me mother was a sweet woman, Mr. Fulton,” she added in- 
consequently. “She had the sweetest, prettiest face. ‘Where 
did you come from, ye little black divil,’ she’d used to say 
to me. She had blue eyes and fair hair that she parted in 
the middle and dressed in smooth strands over her temples. 
Ah,” said Miss McGee, shaking her head over her work, “she 
had a power of offers, one way and another, me mother. But 
she stayed faithful to me father’s name, God bless her. And 
when she was old she died.” 

The fire sent out little jets of flame in response to Robert 
Fulton’s “doing-up.” It filled up any pause in the conversa- 
tion with little friendly noises — hisses and spurts that it made. 

“I see Ma’a now,” Miss McGee said, “the way she’d used to 
look. She was a home- woman, bless her. When I’d come 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


29 

in from me work she’d come to the door to welcome me. ‘Katie,’ 
she’d say, ‘I’m glad to see ye back. Ye’re late to-night.’ And 
we’d sit down to tea together — me sister married young and 
left Ma’a an’ me — an’ I’d look at her an’ think there never 
was such a pretty thing before . . 

Miss McGee stopped. 

“You must be lonely without her,” said Robert gently. We 
know he was perceptive. 

For a minute or two Miss McGee said nothing. And then she 
looked up and looked him full in the face. “We must all be 
lonesome at toimes, Mr. Fulton,” she said. And she dropped 
her marvelous eyes and looked ugly again. 

“She reared us strict, Ma’a done, you bet,” Miss McGee 
resumed after a while. “She wasn’t one of the intimate koind, 
Mr. Fulton. She kept herself to herself an’ she kep’ us to our- 
selves. There was no boys about, be-lieve me. When me 
$ister married it was Ma’a chose the boy. ‘I’ll have no drunk- 
ards brought in me house,’ says she, ‘not no libertines neither.’ 
So she chose an honest bo’oy an’ me sister Mary married um. 
She’s borne um eight kids an’ there’s four of ’em dead, an’ 
she’s a happy woman, Mary Garry is — but she’s never cared 
for her husband ...” 

Robert Fulton saw no way of commenting on these facts, 
and so he once more held his tongue. His thoughts, now that 
the chicken and tea were all cleared away, had turned to his 
manuscript and he wanted to be reading it. But he saw no 
way of opening that conversation. 

“I wonder,” he said irrelevantly, “how you would have liked 
it if your mother had never left Ireland.” 

“Not at all,” said Miss McGee promptly (she divided these 
three words into distinct entities, not sounding the final con- 
sonant on to the following vowel). “Sure, it’s good in Canada. 
I’ve took a look,” she said; “our folks is not so koindly when 
they comes out here as what they’d used to be in Ireland, but 
ye git more here I guess.” 

Robert Fulton, in spite of himself — it was instinctive — 
glanced about the little room: and Miss McGee, whose eyes 
had been fixed on her work, raised them suddenly, and fixed 
them on his. 

“Sure,” she said, just as if he had spoken, “I haven’t made 
much of ut. It’s women alone have the poor toime. But,” 
she hesitated. “Well,” she said, “I’m some more re-fined, I 
guess, Mr. Fulton, eh, than ef I’d stopped back there in Ire- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


30 

land.” She glanced down at her hand. “I’d never ’ve kep’ a 
hand loike that,” she said, laughing, “ef I’d stayed back where 
me father was.” 

For the first time Robert Fulton looked at Miss McGee’s 
hand. He saw that it was a small hand, a well-shaped hand, 
a white hand. (She covered her hands with paper bags and 
slipped elastic bands round her wrists when she had house- 
work to do.) He saw also the nails. Miss McGee’s nails 
wouldn’t have been like that — if she had stayed in Ireland. 
Robert Fulton saw in a flash what she meant. 

“Yes,” he said. “But is it worth it?” 

And Miss McGee saw what he meant. 

“Sure ye have to loose some way,” she said. “Ye know 
that’s true, Mr. Fulton. Ye can’t be koind an’ git on in 
the wor’rld too. Here,” she said, “ye have to work an’ work 
har’rd, but ye have the feelin * ye’re equal to the best. That’s 
somethin’, eh,” she added after a minute. 

“Miss McGee,” said Robert Fulton suddenly, “will you let 
me read you something I’ve been — writing?” This last re- 
mark of Miss McGee’s had pushed up into his mind an 
early remark in his Paper, ‘I should say at the start that my 
main theme will be not so much Canada in and by itself as 
Canada’s effect upon the European immigrants,’ and he longed 
to be up and reading all that he had written both before and 
after that remark. “I’ve been writing,” he went on hastily — 
his self-consciousness had fallen from him as a cloak falls 
when you undo the clasp — “and I took the liberty of bringing 
my manuscript down. Would you — if you’d let me read it to 
you I’d — I’d be very much . . .” 

He stopped. 

“Sure,” said Miss McGee heartily — she had seen him bring 
the manuscript in and put it under his cap on the window-sill 
and she had wondered what it was — “sure, Mr. Fulton, I’d 
think ut the treat an’ all. I love a bit of readin’,” she said, 
and there was sincerity in her tone, “but it’s rarely I git a chanst 
of ut.” 

“I don’t know if you’ll like this,” said Robert hesitatingly: 
the sentence out of his essay, now that he had had time to 
turn it over in his mind, seemed hardly applicable to the 
occasion. His self-consciousness began to envelop him again. 
“I can’t even tell you what it — is,” he said. 

He came to a stop. 

“Whatever it is, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said, “I’ll take 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3i 

ut as an honor ef ye’ll let me hear ut. Why,” she cried ex- 
citedly, suddenly bethinking herself, “I never in my loife had 
anyone read me anythin’ they’d wrote. I never knew ye did 
wrote,” she said. “I never thought ye . . .” 

She was going to say “could” but she stopped herself in time. 
It was indeed a matter of intense surprise to her that Mr. 
Fulton, whom she had taken for a mere innocent man, could 
write anything. She stopped herself in time, but it was only 
just in time. “Git in roight now,” she said, “an’ star’rt be- 
fore the noight gits older. I’ll set workin’ here, an’ ef I don’t 
git on to what ut is — ye’ll explain. I’ve not had much chanst of 
an education,” her voice fell a semi-tone. “I wisht I’d had. 
I worry some the way I don’t know things — I did plan I’d 
be a school-teacher onest when I was young. But that’s neither 
here nor there,” she ended, her voice righting itself. “Go roight 
ahead so I kin listen. . . .” 

Robert Fulton rose and went to the window-sill, took the lit- 
tle rolled-up manuscript and came back to his seat. He felt 
suddenly nervous. What if she should think him a fool. What 
if, when he read it out loud, it should sound thoroughly and 
detestably bad. He cleared his throat. “It’s only a very little 
thing,” he said, “just a beginning . . .” 

And he unrolled it, twisted the pages backwards to make 
them flat again, and, spreading the manuscript on the table, 
began to read. 


CHAPTER V 

W HEN Robert had finished reading there was the usual 
disturbed pause that occurs at the end of anyone’s read- 
ing anything. Reading aloud one’s own wares is fascin- 
ating, but it is also a risky business. Reading, for one thing — 
however well the reading may be done — is not calculated to 
arouse enthusiasm. Eloquence, the spoken word, the sugges- 
tion of improvisation, the touch of heart on heart, will arouse 
an audience, whoever it may be, so that it is able to shake off 
its self-consciousness and — be articulate. An audience ad- 
dressed by someone with the kindling gift is set on fire — when 
an orator has done speaking those who listen rise, and, burned 
out of all consciousness of self, acclaim the man who has 
wrought this miracle on them: the orator feels his power, the 
people he has addressed do homage, all goes merrily as the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3 2 

classical marriage-bell. When, however, someone sits down 
and in cold blood reads something, with his eyes necessarily 
glued to his paper, this kind of enthusiasm is not evoked. 
The end of the reading is apt to be greeted rather by the 
sound of the funeral-bell. The audience is mute, oppressed, 
very conscious of self; and with all its energies bent on trying 
to think of something appropriate to say, it sits very unhappy 
indeed — and making the reader yet unhappier than itself by its 
silence. Even Tennyson himself, of whose reading of “Maud” 
we have all heard so often, may have suffered occasionally 
from this recalcitrancy on the part of his audience. 

Robert’s reading was no exception to the rule. When he 
had finished there was an intense silence. Poor Miss McGee sat 
at the other side of her waning fire, tied up in a knot and won- 
dering what on earth she could say. She wanted to say 
something very nice indeed and, naturally, the more she wanted, 
the less she could attain. She sat tense, inelastic, pulled to- 
gether — though outwardly calm and peaceful. As the moments 
went on she began to feel a sense of desperation. What was 
she to say? What could she say? 

The fact was, of course, that there was a great deal of 
Robert Fulton’s manuscript she hadn’t understood. It was 
above her. What could she do with a sentence like this, ‘The 
two countries (Canada and England) are so alike and at the 
same time so very different that any power of thinking you may 
possess will almost inevitably be forced to the surface by the 
change from the one to the other; one of the drawbacks of 
general travel is that the lands you visit are so totally different 
from what you are accustomed to at home that all capacity for 
just comparison is taken away from you for the time being, and 
your power of thinking is more or less in abeyance — we need 
only recall the traveling letters of any ordinary mortal to con- 
vince ourselves of that truth.’ To Miss McGee travel was 
the ideal way of spending some, at least, of life. She hadn’t 
known before that it had a drawback. And then what did 
‘in abeyance’ mean? What were ‘traveling letters’? Miss 
McGee got on an average one letter in the year — a Christmas 
epistle from her cousin in New York, and it said to begin with 
“hoping you are well,” and to end with “no more at present 
from yours.” Was that a ‘traveling letter’? It traveled a 
long way — from New York to Regalia. No treat was greater 
to Miss McGee than a book; she had spoken truthfully enough 
when she had said she was fond of reading. But what kind 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


33 


of reading? On Saturday night, on the way back from work, 
Miss McGee was accustomed to call in at one of the great 
Departmental Stores and make her way to the Library Section. 
There she would say good evening to the “young lady” in 
charge, and then, wandering aimlessly in front of the book- 
shelves she would take down a volume here and a volume 
there and dip casually into them; and then, ten to one, she 
would turn at last to the young lady and say, “What’s a nice 
book, eh? Could ye fix me one for Sunday”? And the young 
lady, affable to all literature, would pull out a volume and say, 
“Gee, that is one cracker-jack, you bet,” or words to that effect. 
And Miss McGee, meekly accepting the judgment of authority, 
would pay her deposit of two cents for the night’s read of the 
masterpiece and go off with it under her arm. And she liked it. 
She considered the cracker-jack was a cracker- jack; she formed 
one of the public who so generously create best-sellers. She 
cried at the places indicated by the author and laughed at the 
places where wit was provided, and when on the Monday morn- 
ing, on her way to work, she carried back the cracker-jack and 
paid the remaining two cents for the treat she had had, she said 
to the young lady, “Say, my dear, that’s a well-wrote book, eh?” 
And the young lady would reply, “I believe you,” or “I should 
worry,” or “true as steel,” or something of that kind: and the 
author had walked up one more step of the ladder of fame. 

Seeing that this was the case, it will be perceived that Miss 
McGee was hardly up to Robert Fulton’s literary standard; 
he had been perfectly correct in his diagnosis of her intellec- 
tual state. She had had a vague idea while the reading 
was going on that it was a fine thing she was listening to; 
Miss McGee, in common with a good many other people, 
whenever she didn’t understand a thing concluded that on that 
very account it must be fine. Robert had besprinkled his 
literary garden too from a watering-pot of quotations (he 
thought, poor soul, they were patent to the sparrow on the 
house-top) and these, Greek as they were to Miss McGee, 
complicated the situation. She had never read “Little Dor- 
rit,” so what was she to make of ‘life in Canada is the an- 
tithesis (and what on earth was that!) to the sort of offi- 
cialized existence led in the Circumlocution Office.’ The im- 
mortal Tite Barnacles were for Miss McGee as if they were 
not and had never been. Odd as it may seem, she hadn’t 
even heard of “David Copperfield,” and therefore Robert’s sen- 
timent that you cannot look at Canada without feeling a lit- 


34 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


tie as Littimer did towards David ‘though Canada has not 
the perception or sensitiveness of David, so neither guesses your 
thoughts nor would be interested in them if she did/ was lost 
on her. As for La Fontaine’s frog, which in Robert’s man- 
unscript was made a symbol for ‘that inflation of the New 
World which is so distinct from growth,’ it was not even a 
name to her. How should Miss McGee have heard of La 
Fontaine? His Fables would have bored her, anyway. It 
was impossible for a man like Robert Fulton, accustomed to 
books from his infancy (and perhaps before it) to realize 
the position of a Miss McGee — who read, as the Scotchman 
jokes, with deeficulty, and whose literary taste was bounded 
on the North by “Evesham Bobby” (a synonym for the Duke 
of Tynmouth), on the South by “Great Love Gets There Every 
Time,” and on the East and West I will not say by what. 
He simply, with the best will in the world, could not throw 
himself into the area of sentimentality and obviousness, false 
reasoning and bad grammar that Miss McGee regarded as 
the literature of the age, and he was unable to quote from any 
of the books she knew — because he had not read them. 

Miss McGee was in a hole. She was tempted — in one- 
half of her — to wish that Robert had never come to tea. How- 
ever, there was another half of her that was quite different 
from the first half; and that half, most irresponsibly and un- 
reasonably, was glad he had come. It didn’t matter that he 
said, ‘In Canada’s atmosphere there is something young; some- 
thing of that awakening self-consciousness and ambition and 
vague sense of latent power that exercises a fascination over 
many of us. It is the spirit of aroused egoism walking abroad, 
but just as the first conscious manifestations of the ego in 
himself are fascinating to the individual, so Canadian life is 
fascinating to those who come to it in something of a kindred 
spirit. The liking for Canada is largely temperamental.’ 
She hadn’t the slightest idea what all that was about, but 
at the same time she was proud that he should have selected 
her to read it to. She loved sitting there listening to things 
she didn’t understand, in the half of her that was glad he 
had come; and she wished — oh how she wished! — she could 
prove worthy of his confidence. Had Robert been able to 
say what his Paper said in burning personal words, the one 
half of Miss McGee would have risen and cast the other 
half from it and answered him in words as burning as his own. 
It was Robert’s method that got between him and his listener. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


35 

It was the technicality of his writing — the literary form in 
which he chose to en-wrap his thought — that put Miss Mc- 
Gee off. She had never been taught the use of specialized 
tools like that — she didn’t understand; how could she? And, 
being hit hard with the intellectuality of it all and rendered 
in her turn self-conscious to the last degree, she was afraid 
of saying anything at all in case she made a fool of herself. 
Possibly Miss McGee is not an isolated case of such feel- 
ing as this. Possibly she was quite as much sinned against 
as sinning. If Shakespeare (let us say) had written Rob- 
ert Fulton’s little criticism on Canada and its ways and had 
sat by Miss McGee’s fireside reading it aloud, Miss McGee 
might never have been self-conscious at all. 

For a while it was a drawn battle between Miss McGee’s 
two halves: and then, after a minute or so of complete silence 
(which seemed like an eternity to both of them), she said in 
a small voice, “Oh my, Mr. Fulton, that’s lovely, eh!” 

It was not a very stimulating remark. It was even a rather 
silly remark. But Robert Fulton felt a good deal heartened 
and even stimulated by it. He also had been feeling a com- 
plete fool in the small (and at the same time eternal) silence 
that had greeted the end of his reading; he had felt so much 
of a fool that if the silence had lasted much longer he would 
have gathered up his ill-fated manuscript and with it he would 
have escaped to his own den, two stairs up: and there in 
company with his literary work he would have spent a suicidal 
night. However, by speaking at all Miss McGee broke the 
evil spell, and by saying, “Oh my, Mr. Fulton, that’s lovely, 
eh!” she indicated at least her good-will. Good-will is some- 
thing. It is a good deal. Robert Fulton felt suddenly saved 
— calmed — cheerful. His artistic streak went up with a 
bound, the “prespiration,” as Miss McGee always called it, 
ceased rolling down him in the secret recesses of his being; 
he looked up with his candid blue eyes and right into the dark 
mysterious queer eyes of Miss McGee and he said naively, 
“Did you like it?” 

He couldn’t have said anything better. With that remark 
Miss McGee became assured once more (a thing she had 
doubted while he was reading his manuscript) of his human- 
ity. The fact that he was able to write things that other 
people couldn’t understand dropped away from her and she 
was able to look upon him almost, though not quite, as she 
had looked before. It hardly seemed possible that the same 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


36 

thing that had written ‘What is lacking in Canada in spite of 
her youthfulness, is the spirit of fertility — fertility of brain and 
imagination, without which the fertility of field and forest 
and stream are of little profit’ could also have said, “Did you 
like it?” in that gentle humble tone of voice. “Oh, bless 
um, he’s just an innocent young man,” Miss McGee said to 
herself, and she felt reassured. Out loud she said, “Like 
it! Why, I think it’s great. It’s a grand thing you’ve 
wrote there, Mr. Fulton. I never thought,” (and this time 
she said it) “you had it in ye.” 

As soon as she had said that she felt she shouldn’t have 
said it, and she wished she could retract it. But Robert 
Fulton, responding to the tone of her voice (which was warm 
and human), said “Oh!” And stayed where he was, looking 
into her deep eyes with his lighter ones. And they sat a 
while like that, he perfectly unself-conscious and she almosb 
so, looking deep, deep into one another. 

It was Miss McGee who came back first. She straightened 
up, and moved in her chair, and colored a little, and re- 
moved her eyes: and then she said, “You must have went 
about the wor’rld a lot, eh, Mr. Fulton, before ye could write 
that.” 

Robert Fulton felt at a loss. His moment of complete un- 
self-consciousness had been snatched from him. He could 
have sat a long time looking into Miss McGee’s eyes; not 
because they were the eyes of a woman — not at all — but be- 
cause they were something human to look into: and that, by 
means of them, he could get — somewhere. He felt this pos- 
sibility, as I say, torn away. He felt his eyes left in mid-air, 
so to speak. He took possession of them again, removed 
them from where they were, and turned them to where Miss 
McGee had turned hers — to the dying fire. “Oh well,” he 
said vaguely, “yes, I suppose I’ve seen things.” 

Now, this to Miss McGee was a facer. She had sized up 
Robert at their first meeting when he had carried the coal up- 
stairs for her as “an inexperienced fella.” Miss McGee 
knew only one kind of experience — that of actual life. She 
had knocked about the world for a long time, and in that 
knocking about she had encountered most things there are to 
encounter. There were few things in the commercial world and 
in the sex world (though Miss McGee herself was chaste) that 
she didn’t know. She had been born into the world with an 
agile brain. She had used that brain on anything and every- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


37 

thing she came across; and the result was that in the two 
spheres that were open to her there were few things she didn’t 
know. You couldn’t have shocked Miss McGee by telling 
her anything about those two spheres. It would have been 
impossible. She knew the worst that was to be known, and 
in a sort of half-cynical, half -melancholy way (with a dash of 
humor super added) she accepted it. “Men are men and 
women are women,” she would have said. “God made them 
that way and you can’t make them different.” And what 
men did to women and women to men in the sex world, what 
men did to men in the commercial world and women to women 
in a mixture of the two worlds — she took for granted. Her 
being a devout believer didn’t impinge somehow on her view 
of this world. This world is as it is — and the next world 
will be as it will be; different in every respect, Miss McGee 
would have said, and having no connection with here and 
now. 

Being deeply experienced in this limited way she natural- 
ly sized up everybody else from the depths of her limitations. 
She saw Robert Fulton, neat, quiet, shy, gentle — with the 
occasional quick naive artistic kindling that distinguished him 
— and she took for granted that he was inexperienced in every 
way. She saw that he was unaccustomed to women (and 
women size up a man almost completely from that) and she 
said to herself, “He’s a boy. He knows nothin’. . . .” 

Judge then of her surprise that this “young fella” whom 
she had taken to be a sort of Schuler in Faust (only she had 
never heard of either Faust or Schuler) should evidently have 
not only thought and felt, but have actually gone about the 
world and seen it in a way she — Miss McGee — had never 
done. Reading, to a person of Miss McGee’s experience — 
is a sort of by-way; if it be a highway at all it doesn’t seem 
to her to be leading anywhere special. But traveling, the 
actual seeing of other countries and mingling with the inhabi- 
tants, that, to a Miss McGee, means . . . well, it means “an 
elegant education.” As she sat on the other side of the dy- 
ing fire from Robert Fulton, all sorts of new ideas and ap- 
prehensions about him were flooding her mind. As she sat 
there indeed a sort of French Revolution was taking place in- 
side her. This young inexperienced creature had been about 
the world; he had seen things and thought about them — he 
was able to put his ideas together so as not to be able to con- 
vey them to someone else . . . Miss McGee guillotined on the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


38 

spot all her preconceived ideas about Robert Fulton and placed 
him on the pedestal on which women always place men when 
they begin to care for them. That night, in the most unex- 
pected way, Robert Fulton walked out of a certain place in 
Miss McGee’s consciousness and into another part. She sud- 
denly felt for him — and she knew she felt it — an impulse of 
the most tender admiration. He could write like that! He 
could say ‘possibly money is fertile: it certainly does beget 
money, once you have the proper start . . He could, with- 
out rhyme or reason, define the Canadian climate as ‘brilliant 
sunshine and a diamond quality in the air.’ He could (bless 
um!) burst into things like this, ‘Canada has not emerged 
from the early spoilt-child stage, the stage of noise and grab 
and acquisitiveness and intense appetite for the material things 
of life’ — and God only knew what he meant by that! Still, 
he could say things like that! He could “write”! All that 
she had previously read seemed to her suddenly worthless. 
She felt that she never would be able to say again to anyone 
that she was fond of reading — she who could not understand 
this wonder that Robert Fulton had put before her. 

“Say, that’s a grand thing, Mr. Fulton,” she said. “It’s 
— sure, it’s foine. I — I didn’t know ye’d read a thing like 
that to me ... or I’d never’ve asked ye to come down.” 

It was well that Robert Fulton was perceptive, or he might 
not have understood what Miss McGee was driving at. He 
did understand. And he glanced over gratefully at her. 

“It’s — it’s only a very little thing,” he said stammeringly. 

“It’s a big thing, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said, and her 
voice was grave. “Sure, it’s the great big grand everlastin’ 
koind of thing.” She stopped a minute. “Ef ye’d have the 
koindness,” she said, “to come down Sunday noight” (in her 
mind she had already resurrected the remains of the chicken 
into creamed chicken on toast) “an’ read out loud again — I 
. . . p’raps I’d take hold some better.” 

“I guess I’m stupid, Mr. Fulton,” she went on. “I’ve not 
had the elegant wor’rk you’ve had put in ye. But I’d loike 
to git ut . . . ef ye’d explain.” 

She paused. 

“If ye’d come Sunday,” she said, “it would be a great agree- 
ment.” 

She meant “agrement.” She mixed with the French-Cana- 
dians in St. Patrick’s church, and she caught up their words 
and used them, anglified, as her own. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


39 

Robert Fulton felt something warm and soothing run into 
his heart. 

“Thank you, Miss McGee,” he said. “Thank you. If it 
doesn’t bore you, I’d — I’d like to come on Sunday.” 

And then, on another impulse of self-consciousness, he took 
out his nineteenth-century watch and looked at it. 

“My goodness,” said he. “Look at the time . . . !” 

He sprang to his feet and stood opposite Miss McGee. 

“Good night,” he said. 

His self-consciousness had once more left him. 

“Good night,” Miss McGee said. She didn’t offer to get 
up, nor did she stretch out her hand as usual. She merely 
sat where she was and looked up at Robert Fulton from un- 
der her long dark eyelashes. 

“Won’t you shake hands?” said fie. He couldn’t have told 
you why he said it. They always did shake hands, and he 
had never thought anything about it before. But now it sud- 
denly seemed to him that he would like to shake hands with 
Miss McGee. “Won’t you shake hands?” he said smilingly; 
and he stretched out his slender womanlike hand. 

Miss McGee slowly put her plump warm soft hand into 
his. She let it lie there, and she allowed him to clasp it and 
hold it — and then shake it warmly. She felt that he only 
shook it as he would have shaken any other human being’s 
hand that had praised him. It might have been a man’s 
hand in his — or his mother’s — or his aunt’s . . . 

When her hand dropped back into her lap she rose up and 
went with Robert to the door. 

“You’ll be in Sunday then,” she said. “But come ahead 
of toime, eh, Mr. Fulton, an’ we’ll have the good evenin’s read. 
Come in at six, eh?” 

She watched him run rapidly up the stairs, and then she 
closed her door slowly. 

“I’m old,” she said to herself. “I’m old.” 

The thought seemed to her for the moment almost too bit- 
ter to be borne. The thought of her ardent youth that she 
had sacrificed to her mother came rushing over her like a 
torrent. She went about mechanically putting the room in or- 
der, mechanically getting out the tea-things to wash and 

the hot tears coursed down her cheeks. 

“J.’m old,” she said to herself. “I’m old . . 


4 o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


CHAPTER VI 

O N Saturday night (just twenty-four hours after the fa- 
mous reading-party) Miss McGee came homewards 
with a lagging step. The three gowns had proved 
more trying than ever. All day long she had sat endeavoring 
to weld them into one, and all day long they wouldn’t weld. 
“What’s the matter,” Mrs. Barclay had said, on her periodi- 
cal visits to the work-room to see how things were getting on. 
“You’d used to be so clever, McGee. What’s the matter, eh?” 
Whenever anyone said anything like that Miss McGee, who 
had a fearful strain in her (own sister to the superstitious 
strain that coursed in her veins), saw herself on the streets. 
She knew Mrs. Barclay wouldn’t really go back on her. She 
always had been and always would be, in spite of everything, 
a true friend. Still, if she — “McGee” — failed to please, where 
was she? Was her right hand really losing its cunning? 
Was her skill departing from her? Mrs. Barclay didn’t, of 
course, mean what she said but, for all that, disparaging re- 
marks always seemed to Miss McGee to be casting their shadow 
before. 

Whenever Mrs. Barclay had paid a visit to her therefore, 
she had redoubled her efforts on the gowns. “Dam the thing,” 
she had said to herself, “whyever don’t she buy herself some- 
thin’ new !” And she had seized “it” more firmly in her hands 
and struggled — wrestled — with it to make it look something 
like a tunic — which was Mrs. Barclay’s desire: and it wouldn’t 
look like one. No, it wouldn’t. It seemed to have a life of 
its own, foreign and antagonistic to hers. Do what she would 
not an atom of “style” or “pep” would come into it. It 
remained, in her own word, “dumphy.” By the afternoon the 
tunic that wasn’t one raised despair in its creator’s soul and 
ire in its possessor’s. “Whatever’s the matter!” Mrs. Barclay 
had kept saying. It had been a miserable day. 

To complete the tragedy, the weather had broken. The 
clear golden days had suddenly gone as if they never could 
have been; and in their place had come a fierce black stormy 
day — precursor of the long months of the Canadian winter. 
The few leaves — amber only yesterday — turned a sickly yel- 
low or a withered brown as you looked at them; they detached 
themselves from their branches one by one in a heart-sick 
sort of manner, and came fluttering to the ground. The bare 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


41 

branches that they left looked flaccid, soaked with the down- 
pouring rain. The world had looked a dejected world as Miss 
McGee surveyed it out of the Barclay window; it had looked 
a world with an inky sky out of which fierce torrents of rain 
had come swishing and pouring, a world with soaked side- 
walks, and swamped passers-by, and tired dripping horses. 

Miss McGee was dependent on the weather for her cheer- 
fulness in life. A clear sunny day, and she was “keyed up” 
as she said to enjoyment; a wet heavy day, and she went 
so out of tune that you couldn’t believe she would ever ring 
clear again. She had sat all this day in a sort of stupor of 
wretchedness. The gown — the sky above and the earth be- 
neath — the periodical visits and ejaculatory remarks of Mrs. 
Barclay — roused in her moments of acute misery: and when the 
misery was not acute it was chronic. It was most unusual for 
Miss McGee to feel this way at the Barclay’s house. She 
regularly spent two weeks of her life there each year — one 
week in the spring and another in the fall — “fixing over” all 
Mrs. Barclay’s and Miss Barclay’s “things.” And she was 
accustomed to look forward to these weeks. They were amongst 
the pleasantest things that came into her life. For the key- 
note of the Barclay’s house was comfort — there were good 
meals and lots of them and a warm upholstered homey sort 
of atmosphere. Then Miss McGee was on a comfortable foot- 
ing at the Barclays’. She shared the family nourishment in 
the dining-room, and Mr. Barclay, who always came home 
when he could “from business” for the family noonday din- 
ner, carved with a liberal hand and always urged a second 
helping. There was no constraint about the Barclay weeks. 
Miss McGee ate as much as she could, and often at night, 
when she left after her day’s work, she carried a basket loaded 
with “things.” The “things” in this instance were not clothes 
to fix over, but bits of cold joints, odds and ends of chickens, 
remains of layer cakes . . . pots of jam, such as that Miss Bar- 
clay had thrust into her hand to make up the quarrel. And 
Miss McGee liked all this. She did not enjoy the Barclay 
food as she enjoyed food that she ate at her “best” customer’s. 
That food — Mrs. Glassridge’s food — was for the hierarchy 
alone. But Mrs. Barclay’s dinners were good solid things, 
well put together and comfortably served: Jennet, in the 
kitchen, looked forward to her share of them and took care of 
that. Possibly Barclay dinners were better for humanity than 
Glassridge food every day. Mrs. Barclay’s dishes had not the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


42 

“gout” that Mrs. Glassridge’s chef knew how to put into his 
cooking. They bore no resemblance to what the archangels 
must eat the one time in the year they feel hungry. But then 
Mrs. Glassridge’s food was on the same grade as the little gowns 
that were wafted over from Paris for her to wear, while Mrs. 
Barclay’s gowns at their best, when they were one gown and one 
alone, were merely good solid articles — like Jennet’s dinners. 
Still, Miss McGee was certainly more at home at Mrs. Bar- 
clay’s then at Mrs. Glassridge’s. In the Glassridge estab- 
lishment she was conscious — resentfully conscious — of being 
out of place, the square peg in the round hole that Robert 
was in Canada: whereas at the Barclays’ she was pleasantly 
in her element. The days as a rule passed quickly. Miss 
Barclay, a thoroughly good-natured girl, often took her out 
shopping with her and gave her tea and hot cakes in the tea- 
room of some Departmental Store. And now look! See what 
had happened! Mrs. Barclay had taken a fit of economics 
and her three gowns had turned into an Athanasian Creed on 
their maker’s hands. 

Not even lunch (as Miss McGee always named the noon- 
day meal) cheered her. The good food tasted like dust and 
the cup of tea like liquid ashes, if there are such things. Mr. 
Barclay’s husky kind voice saying, “Jes’ a sma’all piece more 
cor’rn, Miss McGee!” seemed, in some mysterious way, to add 
insult to injury. 

“What’s the good of ut anyway,” Miss McGee said to her- 
self, splashing her way home. “Here’s me workin’ me head 
awf — and what for! To please her ” All Mrs. Barclay’s 
kindnesses, past, present, and to come, ceased for the moment 
to exist. “Her’s not wor’rth pleasin’,” Miss McGee said fu- 
riously to herself, “that’s all about that. I wisht I was dead.” 

She trudged a bit further through the sloppy slush and 
sometimes deliberately plunged right into the big pools that 
were forming themselves on the uneven side-walks. 

“Can’t she buy somethin’ new!” she said. 

Naturally, it was not alone the three gowns in one that had 
wrought this transformation scene in Miss McGee. In women, 
when the world suddenly and quite inexplicably, as it seems, 
takes on mourning apparel, there is a reason. The three gowns 
were in Miss McGee’s mind; she hated to make a mess. But 
there was something else. And it was a something that she 
was unwilling to confess — to put into so many words — even 
to herself. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


43 

When women are on the brink of the first step towards sur- 
render — not necessarily bodily surrender, but the surrender of 
mind and soul — oneself — that accompanies the feeling of love 
— there is always at the back of their minds a big fear. When 
a woman is young such a surrender seems — and perhaps is — 
the natural thing. The fear (always there) is swamped then 
by the great rush of joyous feeling. The anticipation of “some- 
thing” coming; “something” that is different from and worth 
all that the world has had to show before. But when a woman 
reaches Miss McGee’s age — when she is, technically speaking, 
“old” . . . ah, then it is very different. The joyous anticipation 
is nowhere, for there is no anticipation at all except of grief 
and failure; and the fear of something even more disagreeable 
than usual coming into the life is paramount. Miss McGee 
had had a thoroughly disagreeable life. She had seen the 
world emphatically from the wrong side of the tapestry. All 
the odds and ends of unfinished thread had come her way, 
and she had spent her life in trying to fasten them off — and 
failing. As she looked back, especially, as now, on a dark 
rainy night after a day of ineffectual work, she seemed to see 
her life in no way except one of petty futile failure. “Oh, I’m 
a failure a’alroight,” she said to herself, as she went splashing 
along. “I’m a failure. That’s all about me. And,” she added 
to herself after a minute, “I’m an old fool, too. That’s what 
I am. A darned old fool.” 

Swearing is, after all, a confession of failure in itself. It 
is the expression of a weakness that fails to find adequate lan- 
guage for the consolation of its feelings. In Miss McGee’s 
defense it can only be said that her vocabulary was limited. 
She had not, as she told Robert Fulton, had the advantages 
of an elegant education, and therefore she was not able, on 
acute occasions, to find the exact word to fit her thought. On 
such occasions (they were not very frequent) Miss McGee 
had recourse to what is called “strong” language in which to 
express her feelings. “I’m a darned old fool,” she said to her- 
self, and she felt that sort of miserable pleasure we all do when 
we say and do things we know we oughtn’t to say and do; 
and, as she splashed her way along after this outburst, she 
more deliberately still chose the worst of the puddles to splash 
through. “I wisht to God,” she said, “I could catch the cold 
an’ get the peumonia an’ be done with ut.” And then after a 
second she said, “God forgive me!” — and felt better. 

As she neared home, however, she felt as if it would not 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


44 

be possible for her to go back into her lonely room. “What 
will I do,” she said to herself, “there all alone.” She knew 
what she would do. She would take refuge in that feminine 
consolation — tears. Miss McGee knew very well that if she 
went back into her dark lonely room — if she opened the door 
and saw before her that vista of gloomy loneliness that she 
saw nightly on her return, she would (before she had time 
to stop herself as it were) burst into tears; and once having 
burst, as every woman knows, it is impossible to close up 
again. As well try to stop a cloud-burst before it has spent 
itself. Now Miss McGee had a particular objection to cry- 
ing. She knew it was a relief — for the moment. She also 
knew, as all lonely women know, that such a cloud-burst left 
her with sightless eyes and a “sore head,” as she herself called 
it, that her whole body seemed to smart and her whole soul 
to ache with misery; that not even a night’s sleep could quite 
restore the balance she had upset; that it would take time to 
restore her, time which she had not got to give . . . and that 
the whole thing was silliness and not worth it. Miss McGee, 
in common with all other women who know what sorrow is, 
always tried to keep off a crying fit. Whenever she felt that 
such a thing was in front of her she took means to keep it 
off; if it were humanly possible, she prevented it. Trudging 
along, therefore, with the hot irrepressible tears welling up 
into her big blue-black eyes, she kept saying to herself, “What 
will I do, God help me? Where can I go to keep meself from 
thinkin’?” And after she had said this a sufficient number 
of times the idea flashed into her mind, “Sure I’ll drop in on 
Mrs. Morphy and ta’alk with her a minnut. She'll distract 
me.” 

As soon as she had thought of this Miss McGee felt bet- 
ter. The thought of Mrs. Morphy acted like a charm on her 
sinking spirits so that they ran upward like the mercury in a 
clinical thermometer when the patient has a fever. “I’ll drop 
roight in on the old lady,” said Miss McGee, “an’ see what 
she's doin’. She’s cheery, bless her. An’ ef she ain’t, she’ll 
keep me from thinkin’.” The tears dried up like magic in 
Miss McGee’s eyes (there is nothing like forming a plan, how- 
ever small and poor, for making you feel better) and she 
walked on with a brisker step, now choosing deliberately the 
dryest spots to walk on, and evading as well as she could the 
splashes of mud she would have to brush off later from the 
hem of her skirts. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


45 

Mrs. Morphy, on the ground floor of the Buildings, across 
the court, had a bigger domain than most of the Penelopians. 
She had a fine kitchen (in which her life was spent) a good 
room off it which she rented to a professed cook, Maggie 
Chambers — Mrs. Morphy took “roomers’’; Dan, “the nice 
young man who was always drunk,” occupied the room to the 
side of that; and in a tiny place with a skylight window, 
dignified by the name of room but not much resembling the 
thing, “Mac” lived and did his best to move and keep his 
being going. And “Mac” was the pride and joy of the Mor- 
phy establishment, and in love with a niece of Miss McGee’s. 

“Come in, McGee,” cried Mrs. Morphy, “come roight in 
an’ set down. It’s the worst wor’rld this, an’ I’m wantin’ 
someone to say it to in the wor’rst way. Set down and have 
the cup o’ tea with me. Ye look wasted with want.” 

Mrs. Morphy leant across to where the tea-pot stood on the 
top of the stove and shook a good pinch of tea into it out 
of a paper bag that stood beside it. She filled up the pot out 
of the ever-boiling kettle. “Sure it’s the cup o’ tea’ll do us 
both good,” said she. “Set down, me dear, an’ be welcome.” 

Miss McGee sat down. The kitchen was none too clean, 
there were stacks and piles of unwashed dishes lying about, 
the whole place looked sordid and uncared-for and unpleas- 
ant — but Miss McGee felt comforted. She needed human con- 
tact badly, and if Mrs. Morphy’s home was on the squalid 
side, Mrs. Morphy herself was hearty. She sat in her rocking- 
chair beside the stove as if everything was in apple-pie order 
and she had nothing in the world to do but to rock in a lei- 
surely manner back and forth; and her face (which had been 
a handsome one in its youth) looked on Miss McGee with a 
human smile of welcome. “Sit ye down,” said Mrs. Mor- 
phy, “and make yerself at home. Glory be to God but I’m 
glad to see ye.” 

Miss McGee took the cup of tea that Mrs. Morphy held 
out to her. As she sat in her rocking-chair the hostess had 
merely to stretch out a hand first to one side and then to the 
other to reach all that was required. The milk was on the 
table to her right hand, in its bottle, just as it had been de- 
livered by the milkman in the morning, except that it was only 
half-full now; the sugar was in a paper bag, a little to the 
left; and as to the cups and saucers themselves, they were on 
the sink-board amidst the stacks of unwashed dishes, and 
they just needed a rinse and a rub, God help them, to be 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


46 

ready for use. Miss McGee was not in a mood to be too par- 
ticular. She took the cup of tea as it was offered her, and it 
tasted a great deal better in her mouth than the more elegant- 
ly served cup she had tried and rejected at lunch-time. 

“ ’Tis the foine mess of a world this,” said Mrs. Morphy, 
reaching for the loaf and the butter (also in its own piece 
of paper on the table) and cutting a slice. “There’s Dan in 
his room as sick as a dog with the drink, and Maggie just 
bent on marryin’ um and him not wantin’ her. And there’s 
Mac in love with your niece, McGee, and her not wantin’ um 
through um not bein’ Catholic. Where’s the use of anythin’?” 
said Mrs. Morphy cheerfully, handing Miss McGee the slice 
of bread-and-butter in her fingers. “Where’s the use of loifel 
That’s what I ask.” 

She took a big sip of tea and seemed comforted. 

“Ye well may ask,” said Miss McGee. 

It was frantically and furiously hot in Mrs. Morphy’s 
kitchen. It was not a lofty apartment, nor was it a spacious 
one, and Mrs. Morphy, as long as she had a cent to do it 
with, stoked “like hell,” as Dan said in lucid intervals. The 
window was tight shut, and as soon as Miss McGee was seated 
Mrs. Morphy pushed the door to behind her with a well-di- 
rected kick, and as Miss McGee sat drinking her tea she was 
simply sweltering. But she was glad she had come. The 
physical discomfort was counterbalanced and set at naught, as 
it were, by the hearty friendliness of Mrs. Morphy’s hospital- 
ity. 

“I don’t know what’s come to Dan,” said Mrs. Morphy. 
“Here’s him spendin’ every cent he earns on the drink an’ 
layin’ awf till he has to git up to make some more to spend. 
‘Why in God’s name don’t ye marry Maggie?’ I say to um. 
‘She’s an honest woman as they go.’ ‘I don’t loike Maggie, 
Mrs. M.,’ says he. ‘What’s that to do with ut,’ I says. ‘Marry 
her an’ the loikin’ll maybe come after.’ ” 

“I’d be sorry for Maggie,” said Miss McGee uninterestedly. 
She wasn’t thinking of Maggie. 

“Take me wor’rd for ut now,” said Mrs. Morphy, bend- 
ing forward so that she might be close to Miss McGee’s ear, 
“Maggie’s not wor’rth yer bein’ sawry for. She’s the — (here 
Mrs. Morphy used a classic word) that’ll run after any man. 
Dan’s good enough for her. He’s a deal too good,” Mrs. 
Morphy went on after a second. “Dan’s the noice bo’oy when 
he’s out of the drink.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


47 

Mrs. Morphy was expressing the opinion about Dan that 
Miss McGee had expressed to Robert Fulton. They both sat si- 
lent for some moments listening to the snores of the nice bo’oy 
who was, as Mrs. Morphy put it, “sleepin’ ut awf” in the 
adjoining room. 

“He’s the drunken beast,” said Miss McGee unexpectedly: 
her nerves were set on edge by the constantly-recurring snores. 

“Och,” said Mrs. Morphy heartily, reaching for the empty 
cup, “bo’oys will be bo’oys.” She threw the dregs of Miss 
McGee’s cup into the sink, filled up the cup from the tea- 
pot, added sugar and milk with a generous hand, and passed 
the cup back again. 

“Sure, what I’m worried about is Mac,” she remarked, when 
she had refilled her own cup. “He’s all set on Rose Garry, 
McGee. What for will she not have um, eh? He's the man 
a’alroight.” 

“I know ut,” said Miss McGee, but still indifferently. It 
was impossible for her to concentrate her mind on any but 
her own concerns just then. “But Rose is the har’rd one, be- 
lieve me. Ef she says no she means ut. An’ Rose ear’rns 
her own mooney, too,” Miss McGee added after a minute. 
“She kin say no ef she wants to, I guess.” 

“Och, ivery woman wants a man,” said Mrs. Morphy. 

She paused expecting Miss McGee to controvert this. But 
after a minute Miss McGee said, “That’s true” — and the sub- 
ject dropped. 

“I’ve somethin’ more I want to say to you ” Mrs. Morphy 
said after a bit. Miss McGee had filled up the pause by 
gazing in between the bars of Mrs. Morphy’s fire and seeing 
— things — in the glowing coal beyond the bars. Mrs. Morphy 
hitched her rocker a bit nearer to Miss McGee and once more 
lowered her voice — this time to a whisper. “Me leg’s bad,” 
she said. 

At that Miss McGee came out of her abstraction. The 
love-affairs of Dan and Maggie, or Mac and Rose were not 
enough to rouse her from the study of her own preoccupation, 
but at the hint of physical trouble her heart gave a jump. 
“What’s the matter with ut?” she said. 

Mrs. Morphy with a free gesture (a gesture impossible to 
Miss McGee) turned up her skirts and showed a fair fat 
white leg. She showed her leg in a way that revealed many 
things — that she was a married woman — that she was a much- 
married woman — that she had “seen life,” as it is called — 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


48 

that few things in a certain area of life were unknown to 
her. Had Miss McGee had to show a bad place on her leg 
to Mrs. Morphy she would have done so in a private secret 
manner, lifting her skirts delicately, showing as little of the 
leg as possible; but Mrs. Morphy; with a fine free gesture, 
showed all the trouble and all the leg at once. “Look here 
at me leg,” she said, beginning to undo some singularly un- 
appetizing-looking bandages. “Look at ut, Miss McGee, dear. 
It’s sore . . .” 

It was “sore.” The sight of it reached far down in Miss 
McGee and touched a very kind spot in her. “My, Mrs. Mor- 
phy,” she said, “that’s ah-ful.” (So Miss McGee pronounced 
that word.) “It’s a bad place. Ye should take care of that. 
Will ye not have a man in to see to ut?” (She meant a doc- 
tor.) 

“None of your men for me,” said Mrs. Morphy emphati- 
cally. “Where’s the money to pay for ’em . . . ?” She was 
beginning to wrap the unappetizing bandages round the leg 
again (it had been a fine well-shaped enticing limb before 
Mrs. Morphy let it get so fat) when Miss McGee stayed her 
hand. 

“Wait a minnut, Mrs. Morphy, eh” she said. “Let me band- 
age ut for ye. I’ve often bandaged Ma’a’s.” She looked 
around. “Where’s some clean stuff,” she said, “that I can 
fix ut with?” 

“There’s none,” Mrs. Morphy said. 

A minute after that Miss McGee was on her way to Sem- 
ple’s drug-store. As she hurried along she never noticed the 
dreariness of the night, nor did she think of the condition of 
her own heart. The state of Mrs. Morphy’s leg occupied the 
whole of her consciousness and there was no room for any- 
thing else. “The poor thing!” she kept murmuring to herself. 

At the drug-store she bought the lint and a cooling lini- 
ment, recommended by the drug-man, as Miss McGee called 
him, and, with these in her hands, she went hurrying back to 
Mrs. Morphy’s kitchen. She knelt down on Mrs. Morphy’s 
none-too-clean floor, unwrapped the old bandages with careful 
hand from the fair soft white leg that had so emphatically 
seen better days, washed the threatening-looking sore tenderly, 
and then, very gently and very skilfully too (Miss McGee 
had what are called “good hands”), she bandaged up the wound 
with the clean linen she had brought from the chemist’s — 
all soothingly steeped in the cooling liniment. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


49 

“There,” she said, as she stood off a little from Mrs. Mor- 
phy, “is that easier now a bit?” 

“It’s grand, God bless ye,” said Mrs. Morphy. “Thanks 
to you, McGee dear, I’ll spend a better noight, God willin’, 
than for the long toime past. It’s the bad noights I been 
havin’ of late. . ^ .” 

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” enquired Miss McGee. 

“It’s not after tellin’ more than I can help, I am,” said Mrs. 
Morphy evasively. 

Miss McGee stood looking at her. This evasion, this un- 
expected secretiveness gave her sudden new lights on Mrs. 
Morphy’s character. “It’s the way I would be meself,” said 
Miss McGee — to herself. And out loud she said, “I’ll give 
ye a hand with yer dishes, Mrs. Morphy.” And, turning up 
her sleeves she set the tap in the sink running in a business- 
like manner, feeling the water with her finger to see how hot 
it was. 

“Niver mind the dishes,” said Mrs. Morphy heartily. 
“They’ll do to-morrow.” 

But Miss McGee, paying no attention to her, began to stack 
the dishes for washing in a professional manner — first the lit- 
tle ones, then the bigger, last of all the biggest and the pots 
and pans. Everything in Mrs. Morphy’s menage seemed to 
be collected for washing at one time, but Miss McGee went at 
the job and did it. After she had scraped and washed and 
rinsed and dried the dishes and put them away in Mrs. Mor- 
phy’s cupboard (and she felt like cleaning that out when she 
looked into it) she turned to and scoured out the sink and 
scrubbed the sink-board; and then she washed through the 
dish-towels and the dish-rag she had washed the dishes with 
and set those to dry before the fire. “Is there somethin’ 
else I can do?” she said, glancing round the kitchen. “If 
there is, say the word. I’ve toime. To-morrow’s Sunday.” 

“Bless ye, me deaf,” Mrs. Morphy said. “Ye been sent to 
help me. I’d never have had the strength meself.” Suddenly 
her gray-green eyes that had once been translucent and glanc- 
ing, filled with tears. “I’m an old woman, McGee dear,” 
she said, “an’ none so strong as I onest was.” And then in 
the same breath she went on, “but don’t you be tellin’ anyone, 
dear. I’ve kep’ it to meself till now. So don’t be tellin’ any- 
one about me leg. They’d be sayin’ things if they knew. . . .” 

As Miss McGee went up-stairs — it was an extraordinary 
thing — she felt far less tired than when she had come in from 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


50 

her day’s work and gone across the court to get some comfort 
from Mrs. Morphy. Since that time, when she had thought 
herself dead-beat, she had been out again in the rain and mud, 
she had done a good hour-and-a-half’s work in Mrs. Morphy’s 
kitchen, and she had done a nurse’s work on Mrs. Morphy’s 
leg. 

“I feel fine now,” Miss McGee said to herself, as she put 
the key irl her door and opened it and went into her dark 
gloomsome room. Her tone was quite business-like — there 
wasn’t the slightest hint of an Irish inflection in it. “I feel 
fine . . .” 

There was, in no corner of her consciousness, the slightest 
idea of crying. Never had tears been further from her. “The 
poor soul” she said to herself. “Why don’t them gir’rls of 
hers look better after her! She ain’t fit to be there alone takin* 
roomers — an’ drinkin’ an’ all.” The gin bottle in the corner 
of the kitchen cupboard as she put the dishes away had been 
quite visible to Miss McGee’s naked eye. “I’ll step down 
bright an’ early an’ dress that leg to-morrow, eh,” she thought; 
and all the time she was undressing she kept saying to her- 
self meditatively, “I guess it ain’t roight someway. That leg 
there ain’t roight at all.” 

The room was cold and it felt damp and Miss McGee hur- 
ried to bed. “I’ll not put me things to soak to-night,” she 
thought. “To-morrow’s Sunday, an’ I kin git up a bit ahead 
o’ toime an’ wash them through.” 

By the time she had her things off and had said her prayers 
and looked at the little figure of the Madonna that she kept 
over her bed to “watch over her,” as she said — she felt con- 
tented. She lay down and composed herself to sleep. As 
she thought of Mrs. Morphy a big pity filled her soul — and 
as she thought of Robert another kind of pity — a motherly 
kind — filled the place where the restless longing had been an 
hour or two before. “Sure, he’s a bo’oy,” she said, “an’ a dear 
bo’oy.” She saw him carrying up the coals and showing, by 
his way of doing it, that he had never done it before; and then 
she saw him coming in, as he would be coming in to-morrow, 
carrying his little roll of paper in his hand. “We’ll have 
creamed chickun on toast,” she said to herself, “an’ that’ll be 
noice.” And her last waking thought was, “Thank God fer 
a comf’table bed. There’s many’s the one hasn’t got that. 
Thank God. . . 

She went fast asleep. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


5 1 


CHAPTER VII 

F OR once things turned out as they should. The Sunday 
evening so much looked forward to by both Robert and 
Miss McGee, was a success. Both enjoyed it to the top of 
their bent — each had a bent of his and her own — and both of 
them were sorry when the evening was over. 

As a matter of fact, this evening was a sort of turning- 
point in the lives of both of them; for the friendship whirh 
it cemented between them was a big thing, both for Robert 
and for Katie McGee. They were lonely creatures when all is 
said and done; they led dull lives in which tiny events made big 
marks; for each of them to feel, as each did, that a friend — a 
real live friend — had turned up, was something to think about. 
Each did think the matter over and over and each came to quite 
opposite conclusions about it; yet this fact that drove them to 
opposite conclusions united them as nothing else could do. 

Probably a friendship between a man and a woman never 
yet was a quite satisfactory thing; and probably the reason is 
that a friendship between a man and a woman never is a 
friendship — not, at least until the physical difficulties have been 
bridged over between them, and not often then. Yet men and 
women (or women and men, rather) often think they are 
friends; for a time. And then comes another time when they 
know they aren’t; the friendship — on one side or the other — 
has lopped over into . . . something else. In the case of Rob- 
ert and Miss McGee, it was on Miss McGee’s side that the 
friendship lopped over into the something else; but, though she 
was conscious of this in the dim recesses where we are con- 
scious of such things, she kept the consciousness there. Out- 
wardly, in the part of her mind that was above-ground, so to 
speak, she said to herself that this friendship between her 
and the lonely lad (so she called him) a couple of stairs up 
was a good thing for both of them. “An’ why not?” she 
asked herself indignantly (but why indignantly?). “Why 
wouldn’t ut be a good thing, eh? He’s lonesome. An’ I’m 
lonesome. Where’s the har’rm of an evenin’ or so spent to- 
gether at toimes. . . .” There was no one to answer these 
questions and so it seemed as if it was a good thing. Miss 
McGee choked the questioning part of her back into that lower 
consciousness where things lie in us and ripen; and she com- 
pacted her mind on to the everyday things of life. “He’ll 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


52 

come in Sundays, an’ I’ll have the nice meal for um,” she 
said to herself — this was one of the plans they had formed — 
“an’ we’ll have the cozy toime together.” A smile that started 
goodness knows where in her came slowly to the surface and 
irradiated her face as she thought this. “Sure it’s noice not to 
be lonesome,” she said; and on the Monday morning she went 
to the fashioning of the famous tunic with a new heart on her. 

Robert Fulton’s ideas were a good deal less subtle. He 
didn’t feel anything at all in that deep-down consciousness 
where Miss McGee scented danger. There wasn’t any danger 
for him to scent. It was a true friendship he offered Miss 
McGee. He thought of her as someone divided from him by 
a mountain of years, and to say that he never dreamed of 
scaling that mountain of years by the ladder of love is to put 
it insufficiently. Robert Fulton never dreamed of Miss Mc- 
Gee as an object of love — in the sense of sex-love. He was 
not very old himself; he was young for his years; it never 
occurred to him that a woman getting on for fifty (which was 
the way he would have sized up poor Miss McGee had he 
sized her up at all) would be thinking of love. Robert regarded 
fifty as “old” for a woman — as, in a sense, it is. He liked 
Miss McGee; he was even getting fond of her, but he wasn’t 
interested in her. She couldn’t interest him physically and she 
didn’t happen to mentally either, and she certainly was not a 
target for any romantic ideas in the world. She was just a 
kind elderly thing of no particular sex, who had held out 
a hand to him when he was bitterly in need of a hand being 
held out. He took the hand exactly as if it had been a man’s 
hand, and held it; and he was as unconscious that there was 
any sex connected with the holding of it as if it had been 
the hand of — a unicorn. 

However (for with the subtlety of woman she had managed 
to conceal from him the nadir of her understanding) he re- 
garded her as valuable as a listener. He was grateful to her. 
And, on the Sunday, she had appreciably improved? Habit 
accustoms us to anything, even to the unintelligible; Miss Mc- 
Gee had always been quick — one night of Robert’s reading 
had been enough to create a habit in her. On the second eve- 
ning she was there with the listener’s first essential — interest; 
she wanted to understand what he had to say; she wasn’t 
afraid any more; she could say things herself. Miss McGee 
at no time, of course, got down to the grounds of Robert’s 
thinking anything he did; why, for example, he should re- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


53 

gard travel as not an elegant thing for everyone remained to 
the end a secret for her. However, all such mysteries as that 
she simply laid aside and concentrated herself on anything she 
did understand. On Robert’s side too, things on the second 
occasion were less strained. He was no longer nervous — per- 
haps Miss McGee had become a habit with him. He not only 
read, he sometimes stopped reading and talked; and by such 
means he let his listener into his mind in a way mere read- 
ing never could have done. “What in thunder brought that 
bo’oy out here?” Miss McGee kept saying to herself during a 
great part of the time when he was talking to her — for the 
feminine intelligence reduces all abstract idea to the particu- 
lar instance — “What brought um, eh, away from his home?” 
And she would have given anything to ask. But Robert Ful- 
ton was oddly reticent and Miss McGee was oddly considerate. 
She had, emphatically, the qualities of her defects; and if she 
was unpunctual (to her customers’ despair), if she was quick- 
tempered, moody, prone to exultation without much reason 
and to depression with less, she was also quick to grasp, in- 
tuitive, careful of the feelings of others, if she liked them — 
tactful, in a word. If a person is tactful (tactful not on 
his own account but ours) we can forgive anything. Miss 
McGee neither by word nor hint nor gesture sought to find 
out anything Robert Fulton didn’t choose to tell. She didn’t 
apply her feminine ingenuity to worming out of him things 
he didn’t wish to speak about. And though Robert Fulton 
certainly was not definitely conscious of this — he could not, 
at any rate, have put it into so many words — still he was in- 
definitely conscious of it. It gave him, though he hardly 
knew it, a feeling of safety in Miss McGee’s company. He 
felt instinctively that he could say what he pleased and leave 
unsaid what he pleased, and Miss McGee would let it go at 
that. Such a feeling is at the bottom of every friendship 
(though it is not necessarily at the bottom of love) and Rob- 
ert Fulton was completely conscious of his feeling of friend- 
ship for Miss McGee. It changed the aspect of the world 
for him — so lonely was he; and, as he went upstairs, pretty 
late, after the Sunday sederunt, he was conscious of a warmth 
in the spiritual part of him that^he had not felt for many a 
day. “She’s a good old thing,” he said to himself, absolutely 
unaware how his words would have pierced Miss McGee like 
a sword. “She’s a good old thing.” And he thought a 
moment, pausing on the stairs, smiling to himself. “I’ll take 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


54 

her down everything I do,” he further said — and, half in earn- 
est, half in jest, he felt that he was giving as much as he got, 
and who shall blame him? — ‘Til take it all down and read 
it to her.” And the prospect of many pleasant evenings such 
as the one he had just spent floated before his mind. 

Yes, Robert Fulton was singularly young for his age. His 
mind had, from his childhood up, been filled with a great 
many things which have nothing — or little — to do with love; 
or rather, since all things spring from and go towards love, 
Robert Fulton’s preoccupations did mainly spring from love 
— but not his own. The circumstances of his birth and life 
had rather tended to turn his thoughts from love of his own 
— to give his mind a twist away from that central fact of 
life. And, half-consciously only, perhaps, he had turned his 
attention determinedly to study. In order to still in himself 
the ever-crying thing in all of us, he had definitely preferred 
to look at life reflected — for what are books but the mirrors 
of the lives of all of us? — and so escape what he instinctively 
felt would only be further disagreeables to face. It is good 
for us to bear a certain amount, but each one of us has his 
(or her) own definite amount that it is possible to bear; be- 
yond that amount misfortune becomes, not a salutary lesson, 
but a load that bears us down — down — down ... to ever-in- 
creasing depression and uselessness. Robert Fulton had had 
about as much to bear as he could bear from childhood up; 
what Canada had in store for him on his arrival in her was 
just about that last proverbial straw that over-balances the 
scale. His writing was a mere forlorn hope of balancing the 
scale — not pecuniarily (for it had never occurred to Robert 
to think of his writing as a commercial asset), but just as a 
means of — forgetting himself; the surest means of balancing 
the scale for all of us. 

The friendship with Miss McGee had come at the right — 
what, if it were not so hackneyed a phrase, one might call the 
psychological — moment. As Robert Fulton went up the stairs 
to bed after his evening of creamed chicken and reading his 
manuscript and friendly talk, he felt — saved. “I can do it,” 
he said to himself. “It’s all right.” 

And, as he went to bed — without any Madonna on the wall 
to protect him, without any prayers either as I need hardly 
say — he went on feeling cheered. “She’s a good old thing,” 
he said to himself again. “A good soul. . . .” 

He fell fast asleep. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


55 


CHAPTER VIII 

W HEN Miss McGee had been a young girl she had had 
attractions. Katie McGee had never been beautiful 
— “a beauty,” as they had said of her fair stupid sis- 
ter. She had never had Mary McGee’s silky hair, nor 
her calm blue eyes, nor her soft pink-and-white skin, nor 
her slender straight figure, nor her supreme health. Katie 
McGee had always been what her mother called her, “the 
little black divil of the fam’ly”; and she had had those 
nervous disabilities that go with the sort of high-strung 
temperament she possessed. It had been no unusual 
thing for Katie McGee in the old days to be laid aside 
with a headache that seemed to go from one temple to 
the other, through her head, like a never-ceasing sword-thrust. 
She had suffered from moods — she had been full of eager ex- 
citement one day and speechless with depression the next; she 
had had neuralgias, fits of indigestion. Had Katie McGee 
been a “lady” she would have spent money taking rests at 
Sanitaria; she would have drunk this tonic, eaten that patent 
food, gone from one medicine-man to another. She would 
have been forever talking about her ailments. Being what she 
was — a working-woman — she had said very little about them. 
She had taken them about the world with her as a sort of 
inevitable possession and, as she had grown older, they had de- 
creased in virulence and in violence. As an elderly woman 
Katie McGee had lost most of her headaches and neuralgias. 
She had become less exacting. She took life more as she found 
it. Her mental temperature was more often down at normal 
— and she suffered less. 

But, after the cementing of the friendship between herself 
and Robert Fulton, as she went out of Penelope’s Buildings 
to her work in the morning and as she came back to the Build- 
ings at night, she seemed to feel conscious of something push- 
ing up in her mind; something new, and yet something that 
roused the old Katie in her, that old Katie who had lain so 
quiet for so many years that Miss McGee had almost forgot- 
ten her. She was in a curious way unable to account for this 
feeling she was conscious of inside herself — pushing its way 
up into the world as you may see the slender spike of the 
hyacinth pushing its way out of the sheltering bulb. She was 
astonished. The more she thought the less could she compre- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


5 * 

hend this feeling, that, stronger each day, growing quietly with- 
in her without her help or volition, urged her to think more 
and more about Robert Fulton. Miss McGee recognized the 
outer aspect of the situation. She didn’t think of herself as 
young or beautiful or as possessing any longer any sexual at- 
traction whatsoever. She knew perfectly well she was for- 
ty-six; that she was old for her years; that she was uneducated 
and gray-haired; that such charms as she may once have had 
were far far behind her. She knew all this with a sad cer- 
tainty; yet, notwithstanding, growing from her soul into con- 
sciousness was a desire — a great desire to help, to be of any 
possible service, to do away with herself altogether if need 
be, to push her own personality utterly aside to make room for 
this other personality that had suddenly become to her so much 
more precious than her own. 

The question in Miss McGee’s mind was — what was this 
feeling? It was unknown to her. 

It was not, in her estimation, love. Love, as Miss McGee 
knew it, was a selfish thing. Love demanded. It took rather 
than gave. It stamped its egoism on everything it touched. It 
affirmed itself, denied any other personality but its own. Love, 
as Miss McGee had seen it throughout life, had been a tear- 
ing, rending, frantic sort of thing. A thing short-lived, but 
panting with life while it did live. A thing that wanted more 
and more — a thing that was insatiable, full of desire, un- 
quenchable by anything it got, always demanding more, in- 
sisting. A furious, frightening sort of thing — and with death 
clear in front of it. 

Such was Miss McGee’s conception of love. She couldn’t 
have put it into so many words since formulating feeling is an 
acquired art; we have to be taught to think, as we have to be 
taught to do everything else — but feel. Miss McGee had never 
been taught to think so she didn’t think. She puzzled over 
things and tried to get somewhere, but, not possessing the tools 
that would bring her into the thought-region, nine times out of 
ten she was pushed back into the very place she was trying to 
get out of. As she went to and fro, however, and while she 
was sitting quiet in those houses in which she was permitted 
to sit quiet, she did try to think about this sentiment that 
was pushing its way up out of her heart — or was it her soul? 
What was it? What did it mean? Where was it taking her? 

Sitting sewing this or that, at this time, Miss McGee thought 
a great deal about her youth; this constant close intimate feel- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


57 

ing that seemed part of herself, and was at the same time 
something new, growing up out of herself, was like a rem- 
iniscence of her youth — with a difference; and it brought the 
old days back. She remembered the letter-carrier, Tim Donough, 
just out from the old country, that had wanted to marry her. 
She remembered the other Irish boy that she had met at “Old 
Nancy’s,” her mother’s friend, that had sighed over her blue- 
black eyes. And she remembered Tully Bardwell — that she 
had wanted to marry. Yes, she had wanted to marry him. She 
had longed to marry him. Very nearly she had thrown dis- 
cretion and duty to the winds and left her mother alone and 
gone off with Tully. And then — she couldn’t do it. It had 
been a choice between her mother and Tully. Tully had 
been given to drink and Mrs. McGee had said, “Katie, you 
must choose between us. . . .” 

As she sat in her customers’ houses Miss McGee went over 
this episode, over and over it, a thing she hadn’t thought of 
for years. She had loved Tully with all the hot blood that 
lay back of those blue-black eyes of hers. She had wanted 
him with the fire of her blood and the craving of her flesh. 
She had longed to touch him, to be touched by him, to lie in 
his arms ... she had had all those desires that go with the 
love of the body. His body had tempted hers and she had 
wanted him. 

And she had given him up. She had let him go and had 
stayed with her mother. Had she been right? Tully had gone 
off to “the States” and married a widow with money. He was 
happy — enough it seemed . . . but once, after years, they had 
met again and Tully, a middle-aged bloated man, still drink- 
ing hard, had said to her, “Kate, ye were wrong. Ye should 
have married me. ...” 

Out of these dreams Miss McGee would wake to her cus- 
tomers’ demands, “Yes, Mrs. Glassridge, I guess a little col- 
lar of velvet would smarten it up some, eh. Will I bring 
ye samples to-morrow . . . ?” And when the little velvet col- 
lar had been definitely decided on she would tumble back into 
her own reflections. 

Then there had been Mr. Mitt. He was a later “beau,” 
as Miss McGee called such things. He had appeared just 
before her mother’s death, when Miss McGee had been thir- 
ty-five. Mr. Mitt was an Englishman who had come out to 
Canada, expecting much; and, as happens to expectant Eng- 
lishmen, nothing at all had happened, except a gradual de- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


58 

clension into nothingness. Mr. Mitt had had Miss McGee’s 
“elegant education.” He bore all the marks of it. He read 
the papers and brought Miss McGee the magazines, and there 
wasn’t a subject, as Miss McGee said, that you could ask him 
about that he didn’t know. He was to all intents and pur- 
poses omniscient, and he wore a smart tie, and when you told 
him things, he said, “Really!” in an accent which went to Miss 
McGee’s heart. “England an’ Ireland’s forever at war, God 
help them,” said Miss McGee, “but if ye bring the roight 
Englishman an’ the roight Irishwoman together they’re the 
greatest friends that ever was.” Mr. Mitt had been an as- 
siduous suitor. He had come to the McGees’ twice a week for 
a year; and at the end of the year he had asked Miss McGee 
to marry him. He had nothing and he did nothing, so he 
wasn’t perhaps a great catch. But he had a beautiful way of 
speaking and a nice tie, and he said “Really!” as no Cana- 
dian could do it . . . and Miss McGee thought of it. How- 
ever, this time, too, she stuck to her mother. “Mr. Mitt,” she 
said, “me mother’s not long for this world. I’ll have to see 
her through. But if ye’ll wait, I’ll marry ye then.” 

Mr. Mitt had not waited. Poor old Mrs. McGee had taken 
a long time to die, and Mr. Mitt had tired of it. After her 
mother’s death Miss McGee had found herself with nothing 
but her occupation to look forward to — and she had gone on 
with it. During the eleven years that had elapsed since then 
Miss McGee had never thought of a man. She had considered 
men as past her — or herself as past men, perhaps. She had 
thought of her work and whether she was going on getting 
any — of her food (increasingly) ; of the novel she took home 
from the Library on Saturday night, of her rheumatism. And 
that was about all. For all Miss McGee had thought of men 
since the departure of Mr. Mitt there mightn’t have been any 
in the city she lived in. 

And now, suddenly, without warning, the thought of a man 
had come into her mind again. The thought of Robert Ful- 
ton, younger than herself, far less experienced in the world’s 
ways, the thought of his quiet blue eyes, his fair skin, his 
slender youthful figure, his neat feet and hands, had come into 
Miss McGee’s mind to stay. The feeling she had for him 
was something quite distinct from the feeling she had had for 
Tully Bardwell and for Mr. Mitt. There was in her thought 
of Robert Fulton no trace of the fire she had felt for Tully. 
There was in her feeling no suggestion of the pride she had 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


59 

felt in Mr. Mitt — for Robert Fulton’s culture, such as it was, 
was so unobtrusive that unless you had possessed at least an 
equal amount yourself, you would never have noticed it. This 
feeling that was springing up in her, and growing day by day 
and night by night, was something new — unexpected — unim- 
agined before. It was a comprehensive feeling. Miss McGee 
felt as if she would like to cover up Robert Fulton from the 
world, as if she wanted him not to be hurt — as if she wanted 
this so passionately that there was nothing she would not do to 
prevent it. Miss McGee felt that if Robert Fulton were in 
danger she would thrust her life in between him and the dan- 
ger . . . and find happiness in doing it. 

We all speak of love as if it were one thing that we called 
by that name. It never seems to occur to us that love has 
more strings to its bow than the most complicated instrument 
ever devised by man. Love is what Miss McGee thought it. 
It is a rending, tearing, furious thing, but it is also a very 
gentle restful all-pervading thing. It is the shortest-lived thing 
on earth — but it is also eternal. It is hard and cruel — and it 
is self-sacrificing and kind. It is selfishness itself — and it is 
the obliteration of self. Up to this time Miss McGee had only 
seen love in its manifestations of wind and fury and desire. 
She had thought that a woman’s love for a man or a man’s 
love for a woman must be accompanied by the passionate 
thought of self — or it was not love. And now she guessed the 
truth. 

Day after day she sat in her customers’ rooms and worked 
hard all day long; and then she walked home through the 
ever-increasing cold of the early winter months and as she came 
and went, she kept asking herself, “What is this? Is it 
right? Is it a temptation of the devil . . . ?” She would go 
into St. Patrick’s church and, making her way to the pillar 
she always leaned against she would kneel and pray and pray — 
she would beseech guidance; and, as she rose from her knees, 
she would feel within her — growing — growing — throwing out 
long spear-shaped leaves — this young thing, full of life and 
hope and strength . . . and she would wonder. It was as if 
she had conceived a spiritual child and was carrying it about 
with her. There were days when she went about carefully, as 
a woman goes when she carries life. The feeling grew and 
grew — a soft, still, reverent, loving feeling. 

And one day it came to Miss McGee that she loved Robert 
Fulton. And she wept. 


6o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


CHAPTER IX 

A S the days grew shorter and the Canadian winter came 
nearer, Robert Fulton wilted. When November came and 
'the first icy winds of the long cold months went piercing 
through his insufficient clothing, he seemed to shrink. Each 
year, by the time January came along, he was not only wilted 
and shrunken, he was shriveled, too. He always felt, each 
winter afresh, as if his flesh were getting to be a tight fit for his 
bones, as if his bones were crushing down on his soul : the cold 
had that effect on him that he could hardly breathe or think or 
feel. And indeed, by the time it came March and the winter 
was nearly at an end, each winter he had ceased to feel any- 
thing very special at all. He had ceased even to wish to 
complain — he never did complain much: he only wished that 
Canada and he had never met, or that he and Canada might 
part never to meet again — or that he were dead. With each 
short spring, afresh as everything melted, he felt a rush of re- 
turning life; with each hot parching summer he felt again 
that life was not worth having; Robert Fulton was built for 
a temperate zone, and the arctic winters and torrid summers 
of Canada were not for him. 

He was forced, however, each November to admit anew that 
approaching winter is a beautiful time in Canada. Even in 
untidy Regalia, there was beauty on every side of him as he 
went to work in the morning and returned home at night. 
The clearest crystal spring couldn’t come near the clarity of 
the late autumnal air. A gurgling brook with clear pebbles 
at the bottom of it couldn’t touch it. Canada’s autumn air is 
something all to itself — “diamond” as Robert himself had called 
it — special, unmatchable by any other air. It is the clearest 
thing in all the world, and one feels at times as if one should 
be able to see right through it to some other world beyond:, 
as if the world to come must be just at the other side of what 
one looks at — and quite near to one. 

Robert Fulton, who loved beautiful things, could not wan- 
der through such clarity and not love it. He did. There were 
moments when he felt he did love Canada, or would if only it 
would treat him decently. He loved the great dome of the sky, 
so infinitely, incessantly blue; he loved the great trees of the 
University Grounds through which he passed to go to work 
— he loved the sharp distinctness of every tiny bough across 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


61 


the sky — he loved the contour of things, and their bigness, 
and their suggestion of freedom and space. Sometimes he felt 
that if he had tried the Canadian country with its great wastes 
of land to be reclaimed, he might have . . . But no, Robert 
Fulton was not made for work of that kind, and he knew it. He 
was made for a quiet and orderly life. He sometimes thought 
— and more wisely this time — that if he had been an old monk 
of the fifteenth century, busy all day long over some exquisite 
script, he would have been happy. And, walking through the 
raw beginnings of life that he had chosen, he would imagine 
to himself an old monastery, gray and enduring and beauti- 
ful, and the cultivated lands round about it, and the cloistered 
peacefulness of working there ; and then the toot of a motor-horn 
would cut across his imagery or his search for the right word, 
perhaps, and he would wake up and hurry on to his cheese- 
and-butter counter so as not to be late — and so avoid the fine. 

It was not till well on in November that he took anything 
more down to Miss McGee’s. And it happened that the 
evening he took his next instalment down he didn’t read it. 
He simply sat back in the warm comer that was becoming his 
own by a sort of right, and he gazed into the fire. He pos- 
sessed, to a surprising degree, that masculine power of doing 
nothing particular, and saying nothing particular, and think- 
ing nothing particular — just sitting. 

To Miss McGee such a state of things was impossible. She, 
like most women, didn’t know how to relax. All the time 
she was awake she was doing something; even when she 
was supposed to be sitting still she was moving restlessly 
about in her seat, or thinking some unnecessary thought. To 
sit, as Robert Fulton sat, relaxed in every fiber of his being, 
was to Miss McGee an impossibility. But she was able to 
recognize that he wanted to be left alone and (rather un- 
femininely) she left him alone. Thus they sat together over 
the fire, and for a long time there was no noise in the room 
but the ticking of Miss McGee’s dollar clock, and the occa- 
sional falling of a cinder out of the grate. 

“It’s noice not to be alone,” Miss McGee said at last. She 
felt Irish and happy. 

Robert Fulton waked out of his state of nothingness with 
a start, and came back to life. 

“Is it?” he said dreamily. 

“Is ut?” said Miss McGee: and she laughed. “I been 
sittin’ alone here for ten years an’ more,” she said then 


62 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


gravely. “Since Ma’a died.” And she paused. “It’s some 
lonely woman I been, Mr. Fulton,” said she. 

But Robert Fulton had relapsed again. He was sitting a 
little forward in his chair, gazing in between the bars of 
the fire. There was a far-away look in his eyes, and he 
didn’t answer. 

“It’s a hard life, sure,” said Miss McGee, starting again 
after a bit. “It’s a wonder what it’s for, eh.” 

He said nothing. 

“Ye’ll be thinkin’ of yer folks at home, Mr. Fulton, an’ 
you settin’ lookin’ in the bars of the fire?” Miss McGee said 
then. It was the first question she had asked him. 

That roused Robert. He sat up straight in his chair, and 
out of his quiet blue eyes he looked directly at Miss McGee. 
“No,” he said. “No. I’m alone in the world. I haven’t any 
people.” 

And he looked away from her into the fire again. 

Katie McGee felt her heart give a great jump. He hadn’t 
any people. She could have him, keep him, mother him — 
for a bit. The time would come when he, like all men, would 
want something of his own, something young, pretty, charm- 
ing, soft, speaking like himself (Miss McGee never stopped 
to think where he was to find this paragon) . . . but mean- 
time he was with her. She could keep him with her for a 
bit. It was not necessary for her to face the world alone 
again — yet. Her spirits went up again with a bound. “Sure,” 
said she, “we’re the lonely two. But two’s comp’ny, eh. We’re 
friends.” 

Something in the sound of her voice roused Robert Fulton 
once more. 

“You’re very good to me, Miss McGee,” he said grate- 
fully. He couldn’t have explained why he said it. He merely 
responded instinctively to something he heard in her voice. 

Miss McGee felt exultant. She felt for the moment as if 
she could kick the world like a foot-ball and watch it go up 
in the air. 

“Sure,” she said, “an’ who wouldn’t be koind to you. It’s 
good to have ye. I” — she hesitated — “I love to have ye, Mr. 
Fulton,” she said. “It’s the joy of” — she hesitated again — 
“me loife.” 

But Robert Fulton saw no reason for her hesitation. He 
merely saw before him a good old soul (so once more he 
phrased her to himself) who was kind to him. He smiled up 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


63 

at her in his boyish way, and as she met his candid eyes 
she felt her heart contract. If she had done what her heart 
prompted her to do she would have leaned forward and taken 
his face in her hands and sat there long, looking at it. She 
felt the impulse that a man has when he sits by a young girl, 
to touch — to take some part of the young thing into his arms — 
and hold it. Miss McGee pushed back these feelings with an 
effort. She gave a long sigh. 

“Ye’re but a bo’oy, Mr. Fulton,” said she. 

And she returned to an unnecessary bit of work she held 
in her hands, and sewed. 

"I think life’s a mess,” said Robert Fulton suddenly. He 
was replying, rather late in the day, to Miss McGee’s remark. 

Miss McGee gave a start. It was her own view, but some- 
how she didn’t like to hear Robert say it. 

“Oh my,” she said, “there’s lots to ut too. We has our 
toimes. We kin be with the folks we” — she hesitated — “we 
loikes. . . 

Robert Fulton said nothing. 

“Ye wouldn’t not’ve lived, Mr. Fulton, eh?” asked Miss Mc- 
Gee, after what seemed to her a long time of silence. 

Robert hesitated in his turn. 

“I don’t know,” he said. 

“I know then,” Miss McGee said, letting her work fall. 
“I know.” Her voice had a clear ring in it. “I wouldn’t not 
have lived for all ye could give me, Mr. Fulton. Ain’t ut 
worth just to’ve been aloive? Ain’t ut worth havin’ saw 
the wor’rld? An’ ain’t the sunloight grand, eh, and the whoite 
snow in the winter-toime — an’ the flowers in the spring, . . .” 

“When I was young,” she said after a pause, “me feet’d 
used to dance under me as I’d went through the streets. I’d 
used to see the wor’rld laughin’ as I gawn along. I wouldn’t 
not’ve had that,” Miss McGee said, “fer .... everythin’ 
there is.” She paused a minute. “Ye’re young, Mr. Fulton,” 
she said then. “Ye’re young, me dear” — it was the first time 
she had called him dear — “there’s all the wor’rld in front of 
ye — an’ all loife. . . .” 

And she stopped. 

“I don’t feel young,” Robert Fulton said. 

At that minute Miss McGee would have given all she had 
ever had and everything she hoped to have, yes, in the world 
to come, to fold her arms round Robert Fulton and press him 
to her breast, and rock him to and fro there as one rocks a 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


64 

tired child. She would have put her hopes of eternity away if 
she might have done that . . . 

“My,” she said, “ye’re young. Ye’re young” 

She bent forward a little. 

“ ’Tis a great thing to be young,” she said. “ ’Tis the great- 
est thing in the wor’rld. Ye got the prize. Don’t throw ut 
from ye.” 

There was a silence between them. 

“An’ ye got a gift,” Miss McGee said, “a grand gift. Don’t 
forgit ut. There’s a day cornin’ ye’ll be famous, Mr. Fulton. 
Ye’ll write an’ the folks’ll read what ye write, an’ they’ll be 
scramblin’ and pushin’, me bo’oy, to see ye . . 

She stopped. 

“Ye’ll be glad ye’re aloive then,” she said. 

And suddenly she felt as if she couldn’t bear him to be un- 
happy. 

“Ye’ll be happy, me dear,” she said. “Ye’ll be happy. I 
know ut. Cheer up an’ go on and keep writin’ things. And 
hope on. I’m thinkin’ an’ ...” She stopped again. She 
felt as if she were pushing him away from her, further and 
further with every word. “I’m waitin’ on your success. You’ll 
be happy,” Miss McGee said, “don’t fear. . . .” 

Words with no sense in them come home at times when 
they are said out of a full heart. Robert Fulton, though 
he knew very well that his chances of happiness were the 
slenderest things, brightened up when Miss McGee promised 
him — what she never could perform. He felt her promises of 
happiness to be the next best thing to the thing itself. He felt 
once more actively grateful to her. He turned his eyes away 
from the fire and looked into hers. After a second he smiled 
— he had a nice smile . . . 

Miss McGee felt repaid. 

“Will ye not read the piece ye brought along, eh, Mr. Fulton,” 
said she. 

He hesitated a second, and then, for no reason at all, he 
felt that dislike to his own work that we all of us feel at 
times. He suddenly felt it to be, not only worthless, but 
definitely objectionable. He felt as if he couldn’t read one 
word that he had written — to-night. 

“Not to-night, Miss McGee,” he said. And as she looked 
up at him enquiringly he added, “I’m not in the mood.” 

Miss McGee was quite satisfied. 

“That’s what Mr. Mitt used to say,” she remarked. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 65 

“Who was he?” said Robert. He just asked for politeness. 

“A gen’leman friend,” said Miss McGee. 

She felt the desire that all women feel when they love, to tell 
the man — everything. All about themselves, about their in- 
most thoughts and feelings, and about the events of their lives 
down to the uttermost detail. Miss McGee felt, sitting there, 
as if she would like to empty herself out at Robert Fulton’s 
feet. At the same moment, she felt a sudden instinct of reserve, 
a sentiment of shrinking to show even the outermost layers of 
herself. She longed to tell Robert all about Mr. Mitt — and 
she felt she would never be able to do so. 

“Mr. Mitt was a gen’leman friend of mine,” she said, shyly. 

“Oh,” said Robert. 

He didn’t care who Mr. Mitt was or whether Miss McGee 
had ever had any gen’lemen friends at all. Mr. Mitt’s name 
went in at one side of his memory and passed out at the 
other, and when Miss McGee, at a later date, mentioned Mr. 
Mitt once more Robert Fulton had no sensation of ever having 
heard of him. 

He said “Oh” — that spacious monosyllable: and the sub- 
ject dropped. 

That night, as Robert Fulton went up to bed, there remained 
in his mind one — and only one — impression of the evening. But 
it was a distinct impression — so distinct that it seemed etched 
on his mind. It was that Miss McGee had said, “There’s all 
the world in front of ye — and all life.” And that she had 
added, “Don’t fear.” He felt as if a little courage had been 
poured into him ; or rather, he felt as if a little seed of courage 
had been planted in him and that — if the gods were propitious — 
it might sprout. No one had ever said things to him like 
that before. 

As a preliminary to sprouting he felt the seed go coursing 
through his body with his blood-stream. And that night he 
lay awake. 


CHAPTER X 

I T was on the day of the first snow-fall of the year that 
Miss McGee was thoroughly upset. She had had one of 
her unpleasant days ; and what made it more unpleasant, per- 
haps, was that it had been a day to which she had rather looked 
forward. The tunic was finished. It was an accomplished 


66 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


fact at last — after many days’ wrestling in the wilderness. 
Whether Mrs. Barclay might not have spent less money if she 
had gone to a shop and bought a new dress is not the ques- 
tion; the three dresses that Mrs. Barclay had wished to have 
used up were used up: one was the tunic, the second was the 
underskirt, the third was belt and trimmings combined. The 
Athanasian Creed had at last resolved itself into one. 

But what must Mrs. Barclay do just on this day which should 
have been such a cheerful one but resolve herself into theology; 
as if it were not enough that she had had economics, now 
she must go and catch another thing. She had spent the 
entire day in lambasting Miss McGee (as Miss McGee herself 
called it) with theological crooked questions — to which there 
could be nothing but cross answers. Mrs. Barclay was not 
only a “dissenter” in her religious views, she was a frantic and 
furious dissenter. The Roman Church was to her much what 
it would have been to a Roman centurion before he was brought 
over to Rome. To say that Mrs. Barclay couldn’t abide it is 
to put the case insufficiently. She loathed it, she hated it; 
if she could have taken the whole Roman Church, neck and 
crop, and thrown it once more amongst the lions, she would 
have done it. And then she would have sat in the dissent- 
ing chapel turning down her thumbs and calling herself a 
Christian. 

Being of this turn of mind it was naturally impossible 
for Mrs. Barclay to keep silence long about the subject. In 
season and out of season, when Miss McGee was working at 
Wellston Road, Mrs. Barclay would begin her diatribes on the 
Roman Catholic Church — “Papistry” was what she called it. 
Miss McGee had borne a lot. She was not remarkable for 
patience at any time; and though on the whole she had borne 
it well she hadn’t borne it as well as she thought she had. 
Even when she said nothing her silence was expressive; and 
when she did speak she answered Mrs. Barclay in a more 
devastating way than she was aware. It was the very de- 
vastation she wrought, indeed, that brought Mrs. Barclay back 
and back to the charge. She had no hope of “converting” 
Miss McGee. She knew well in her heart that that was im- 
possible. But she simply couldn’t — couldn't — help talking 
against the Catholic Church and calling it names and dragging 
it in the mud so far as she was able to do so; and Miss McGee 
couldn’t — she equally couldn’t — help picking up the Roman 
Catholic Church so far as she was able out of the mud and 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


67 

carrying it, held aloft, another bit of the way. When Mrs. 
Barclay and Miss McGee sat talking together on religious sub- 
jects they were exactly the Kilkenny cats who used to live in 
the reign of Mary Tudor. If they could have hanged, drawn, 
and quartered one another, they would have done so; and then, 
kind-hearted women as they were, both of them, once one had 
seen the other in separate portions, each would have run to 
try to cement together again the havoc she had wrought. Of 
so much common-sense were they made. 

On this day of the first snow-fall of the season — and the 
completion of the Athanasian Creed — Mrs. Barclay had taken 
what Miss McGee was accustomed to call a “turn for the worse.” 
She had been more maddening than usual. Instead of taking a 
right-minded interest in the accomplishment of her views, try- 
ing it on, and pirouetting in so far as years and flesh would al- 
low her before the glass, she had refused to be interested in 
clothes at all. She had turned, quite unexpectedly, from “per- 
sonal adornment” to the consideration of “more serious things.” 
Miss Barclay had tried to prevent her. Mr. Barclay, at lunch, 
had vainly sought to wrap her mind in mutton chops. Mrs. 
Barclay had eaten the chops and the steamed ginger pudding 
to follow, and then she had returned to the work-room — and her 
subject. From bad things had gone to worse. Miss McGee, 
after a while, had permitted herself a certain flippancy in her 
observations; and, urged on, perhaps, by this, Mrs. Barclay 
had at length permitted herstli a remark regarding the taking 
of the Sacrament (the swallowing of Our Lord was what Mrs. 
Barclay called it) which Miss McGee at least had never heard 
before. It had shocked her. It had wounded her. She had 
felt, on hearing her Lord’s name taken thus in vain, a sort of 
rending wound made in her that a jagged spear might have 
caused had it been thrust in her side. The flippancy died 
out of her. She felt that Mrs. Barclay in desecrating her Lord 
had desecrated her. She felt outraged — debased — as if she 
had been made unclean in having been compelled to listen to 
such a thing. And, on her way home, she had run into St. 
Patrick’s, and there, leaning against her pillar, she had tried 
to wash her soul in the sight of her God. “God, forgive me for 
hearin’ ut,” she had prayed. “Forgive her for the thought that 
come into her moind. Blot ut from my moind an’ heart, O 
God. Take the filthy thought out of me — leave me clean again. 
Print Thy holy name where the thought has been — let me 
be clean. . . .” 


68 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


She had prayed in the soft silent obscurity for a long time, 
and, as she knelt there, a sort of comfort had stolen into 
her mind. She had felt as if she were in the midst of 
strength, as if she were being wrapped round with consolation 
and kindness; and when she had risen from her knees she 
had felt as if the insult had been wiped out. But, as she came 
back into the street and into the every-day world where there 
are Mrs. Barclays and tempters — the thought pushed up into her 
mind with renewed violence. She felt as if she could not 
forgive her old friend for having thus insulted her faith. She 
felt as if she could never go back to Wellston Road, that quiet 
broad street fringed so calmly with maples — as if she must forgo 
for evermore all that solid comfort and kindliness, never even 
carry home baskets with cakes and home-baked bread and 
things for tea any more . . . 

She turned into O’Neil Street from St. Patrick’s and came 
along with the anger thrusting through the chastened comfort 
of the church, as a fire bursts out again after it seems quenched; 
and as she came round the corner of Penelope’s Buildings that 
gives on Drayton Place (where the entrance door is) what 
should she see but Robert Fulton in the passage-way, talking 
to the Janitress. It needed only this. 

If there was one woman on earth whom Miss McGee de- 
tested it was the Janitress. She not only detested her, she 
thought her a “bad woman.” And she not only thought her 
that, she was sure she was. To live in a place with a “bad 
woman” set over her, as, in a sense, Mrs. Savourin was, was to 
Miss McGee a thing hardly to be borne. Above all things else, 
perhaps, Miss McGee was respectable. She had always held her 
head high. Mrs. McGee had been respectability itself. She 
had brought up her girls to hold themselves aloof and to look 
upon the sin of the world — especially the female sin — with a 
rigid eye. Miss McGee felt that by having Mrs. Savourin in 
the basement, the Penelopians were all inevitably dragged down 
a rung of the social ladder. She therefore made it a point to 
show Mrs. Savourin what she thought of her on every occasion : 
and Mrs. Savourin responded with spirit and fought the brave 
fight. 

“Good evenin’, Mr. Fulton,” said Miss McGee, stopping 
transitorily as it were, on her way upstairs, and acknowledging 
Mrs. Savourin’s presence with the minutest of nods. “Are ye 
cornin’ up?” 

She knew she was imprudent to say this. She realized quite 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


69 


well that she was thus, in a way, setting her claim openly on 
Robert. She was saying in effect, “You are my property. What 
are you doing here? Come with me.” And she knew that 
Mrs. Savourin would make use of her slip. But what woman 
ever yet was wise when she loved?— At the sight of Robert in 
close conversation with Mrs. Savourin, jealousy surged up in 
Miss McGee. Not the murderous sexual jealousy she would 
have felt years ago had she found Tully talking to the Jani tress, 
but a quick motherly jealousy (that had its sex-element in it) 
that would have torn Robert Fulton from Mrs. Savourin and 
held him from her by force forevermore — because she was bad 
for him. 

“Won’t ye come up, Mr. Fulton,” she said therefore. And 
she waited. 

Robert was quite unconscious of doing wrong. He had 
wanted his double window (for with the first appearance of the 
snow he, with the rest of the poor, had wished to exclude all the 
air he could from his room and so economize the coal he would 
have to burn) and he had come down to the Janitress to ask 
for the key of the cellar where the double windows were. 

“I’ll come in a minute,” he said cheerfully. “Just wait till 
I get my double window.” 

“Ye best go an’ git ut,” said Miss McGee: and she turned 
and went up the stairs. 

This was the end to her day! As if it wasn’t enough for 
Mrs. Barclay to insult her religion, now she must come home 
to find Robert being seduced by the Janitress. Such was the 
way Miss McGee put it to herself. She made no bones about 
it. “That — !” and here Miss McGee used the classic word 
made use of by Mrs. Morphy with regard to Maggie Chambers. 
“I could murdher her.” 

She went into her own flat and banged the door behind her, 
and with an unaccustomed noise she began to make preparations 
for supper. 

As for Robert, he still stood talking with the Janitress. She 
was a fine free full young woman of thirty or so, conscious 
of her charms, and pleased to show them off to whoever cared 
to look at them. She was fair with goldined hair and large 
prominent blue eyes. She had a white skin that no hard 
work or rigor of climate seemed able to mar or roughen, full 
bosom, large hips, and a disposition to make the best of these 
things. She was said to sell the gentlemen of Penelope’s Flats 
“privileges” — to bring home whatever they fancied at whatever 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


70 

hour they pleased — and to add the surplus, thus earned, to 
her monthly income. She “did herself good” or “got on,” as the 
female members of the Buildings said, however she managed it ; 
for to see her go out Sundays, as the same critics put it, was 
enough to make a tom-cat laugh. That might be, but she 
was a handsome woman. 

She was not a careful person in her speech. She was — vivid. 
She said she had a husband at the War, and perhaps she had. 
But no Penelopian eye had beheld him; nor did he seem to write 
to her. “Husband!” said Miss McGee. “How many ... I” 
She voiced the popular opinion. 

Robert Fulton was ignorant of all this. Completely ignorant. 
He was not a stupid man. He knew, naturally, the things 
we all know as we grow to years of discretion. He knew that 
women are not all virtuous; and he knew the whys and where- 
fores of the loss of virtue, and what such mean in this world of 
ours. He was man born of woman. He had the usual ardors 
of such a descent. He was perfectly human. He was just one 
of us; and besides all this, he was well-read in more than one 
of the literatures of the world: and such topics as the loss of 
virtue together with such personalities as Mrs. Savourin’s have 
always formed, and always will form probably, a part of these 
literatures. Robert Fulton was no fool; but he had an incur- 
able naivete, a sort of lack of suspiciousness, a powerlessness 
(if one may put it so) to put two and two together so that 
they made four: and, therefore, it was quite possible for him to 
stand and talk with a woman like Mrs. Savourin and never 
realize, in his upper consciousness at least, what sort of 
woman she was and what sort of thing she was after in 
talking to a man. He knew — and he didn’t know. And to 
give the finishing touch to his unsuspiciousness, Mrs. Savourin 
and her like recognized Robert Fulton’s position towards them- 
selves with much greater precision than they could have given 
tongue to. They knew that he thought better of them than 
they deserved and they more or less unconsciously acted up to 
the character he gave them, and appeared at their best while 
talking to him. 

Had you explained this to Miss McGee for a year, at the 
end of the year she would have been just as inflexible as 
ever. Yet it was true. Mrs. Savourin, as she stood talking to 
Robert at the entrance-door, was showing at her best. She had 
a certain fund of kindness in her; the look in the young man’s 
eyes brought the kindness surging up from where it often lay 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


71 

perdu for months at a time. She was merely talking to him 
as Miss McGee came into the entrance-hall — saying no harm 
of anyone — not even embroidering her language with the choice 
morsels of blasphemy and obscenity with which she usually 
decorated her speech. As she stood there she was keeping a 
watch upon her tongue. And if, in the recesses of her heart, 
there was something of the feeling of Potiphar’s wife for 
Joseph . . . does it matter? Robert Fulton was unconscious 
of it. It did Mrs. Savourin no more harm than usual. And 
assuredly there was human kindliness mixed with the feeling. 
She wouldn’t willingly have done him any harm. 

Robert went down to the cellar and got the window, and 
Mrs. Savourin went with him. Possibly she tried the ex- 
periment of edging her shoulder up against his as she helped 
him to hoist the window up on his shoulder; and perhaps, 
as they came up the steep cellar stairs, she may have managed 
a collision . . . 

Nothing happened. Robert Fulton 'came up-stairs as he had 
gone down, except that he carried his shutter up on his shoulder : 
and by the time he had got into his room and had (with 
some trouble) adjusted the double window on the outside of 
his single one, the thought of Mrs. Savourin had slipped right 
out of his mind. She didn’t interest him. Her beauty, such 
as it was, was not for him. He asked something a little less 
obvious . . . and anyway, it so happened that the thought 
of woman was out of his mind for the moment. It does slip 
out of a man’s mind at times! 

After Robert had adjusted the window and after he had eaten 
his very simple meal he said to himself, “I think I’ll go down 
to Miss McGee’s and read her that new piece I wrote last 
night.” And with a smile on his face and the joy of anticipa- 
tion in his heart, he descended the stairs again, and knocked at 
Miss McGee’s door. 

His knock was a gentle one, as always. But this time, after 
he had knocked, instead of the door being thrown open in- 
stantly — hospitably — as was the way, it remained obstinately 
shut; and from inside there came no sound. “She can’t have 
heard me,” thought Robert — and he knocked again. Still noth- 
ing. And then he said to himself with a certain disappoint- 
ment and the smile fading out of his face, “She must be out.” 
And he was just turning away when the door opened a little 
way — an inch or two — and Miss McGee’s face became appar- 
ent in the opening. 


72 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


She said nothing. She simply stood there, looking out. And 
this was so daunting to Robert that he said nothing either. For 
a long minute they stood like that gazing at one another, Miss 
McGee’s face set, and Robert’s wondering. 

“Miss McGee,” he stammered out at last, “I just brought 
down something to — to read.” He glanced involuntarily down 
at the little roll of papers in his hand. “I — I thought ...” 

His voice died away. 

“I can’t hear ut to-night, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said — 
and he had never heard her voice like that: so stern. “I — ” 
and she stammered in her turn, “I’m tired. I — I’m going 
to bed.” 

Robert felt that something had happened. 

“There isn’t anything — wrong, is there?” he said. 

“No,” Miss McGee answered: and then she stopped. There 
was something so disarming about Robert’s evident puzzlement, 
his discomfiture, his disappointment at being repulsed — and a 
certain timidity that had come into his bearing — that Miss 
McGee felt . . . different. As she stood there in the crack, 
looking out at Robert Fulton, some of her anger against him, 
against Mrs. Savourin, against Mrs. Barclay, against the world 
in general melted away. She suddenly felt repentant . . . 
but not loving. 

“I’d ask ye in,” she said, “and her voice was more as it 
usually was, “but I’m” — she glanced down — “I’m in my 
wrapper.” 

She paused, and the thought flitted through her mind, “Will 
I ask him to go upstairs for a minnut till I slip in me gown 
again ?” 

She hesitated. And then the thought of everything that had 
gone cross in the day surged up into her mind again. 

“No,” she said. “No. I can’t see ye to-night. I’ve the 
headache. I’m tired. I — I got to git to bed.” 

She gazed out through the crack of the doorway, and it 
seemed to Robert that her eyes grew misty as he looked at 
them. 

“Good night,” she said. 

“Good' night, Miss McGee,” said Robert — and he ascended 
the stairs again. That night Miss McGee cried herself to 
sleep. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


73 


CHAPTER XI 

T HIS all happened on the Thursday. By the following 
Sunday Miss McGee was still so upset that she slipped 
up in the early morning and pushed a note under Robert’s 
door asking him not to come as usual on the Sunday evening. 
“I’m kinder tired,” she wrote, “and I guess I got to git to 
bed. Purhaps” (spelling was not Miss McGee’s strong point) 
“you will come in some night this week insted. I am not sick.” 
And she signed herself as usual “Miss McGee.” 

She had hesitated a good deal before doing this. She wanted 
to see Robert very much. She had a sort of craving to see 
him: but, on the other hand, she thought he might ask for 
explanations (which showed how little she knew that part of 
him) and she didn’t want to give explanations. She didn’t want 
to think of the Mrs. Savourin episode ever again. On the 
whole she decided she preferred not to see him at all, and then, 
the moment after she had irrevocably pushed the note under 
his door, she wished she hadn’t. 

Having done it however, there was nothing for it but to go 
down stairs wearily and get into bed again. It was in such 
very early morning that Miss McGee had slipped upstairs 
that the slow wintry dawn wasn’t even thinking of breaking; 
and she had deliberately chosen this time because she didn’t 
want any inhabitant of Penelope’s Buildings to see her push- 
ing notes under Robert’s door — she knew what they would say. 
Sunday morning, as she well knew^ was the signal for a “long 
lie” on the part of every Penelopian, male and female (who 
was not working at munitions) ; she got upstairs and down 
again without meeting a soul and crept back into bed, feeling 
mentally and physically, yes, and morally too, upset. Lying 
there with her eyes wearily shut she felt as if she were a field 
of grain battered by the wind and rain. If sunshine were to 
come along, she said to herself, perhaps she might be able 
to make the effort to incline herself towards the light and air 
and warmth — and go on growing again. As it was there was 
nothing for it but to lie in bed, not sleeping or thinking of 
sleeping, merely dully aware of her existence in the world : and 
regretting it. 

After what seemed a long time the reluctant light of a winter 
morning came dimly in at the window. She lay looking at 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


74 

it for a time (her bed-room window looked out, not at Drayton 
Place beyond which she could see St. Patrick’s, but to the back 
where there was only the view of the dark court-yard) and then 
she began to get up. She dragged herself to the edge of the 
bed and sat there awhile, her legs dangling to the floor; and, 
for a bit, she put her hands before her face and kept them 
there. At last, with a sigh, she definitely “got up,” put the 
kettle (she had filled it the night before at the common tap of 
water in the passage) on her lighted spirit-lamp — she began 
every day hygienically with a cup of hot water: and then, at- 
tiring herself in an ancient dust-habit of her own conspiring, 
she set to sifting the cinders. This was the start to every day. 
There was no central heating in. Penelope’s Buildings : each 
Penelopian had its own fire: and Miss McGee was unable to 
let any prodigal cinder escape her, for if she had let cinders 
go their way, she would have been unable to go hers: a dollar 
fifty a day is not a princely wage. With her head tied up 
in a cloth, and her body guarded by an armor of sackcloth, 
and her hands elastic-banded into paper bags, Miss McGee 
sifted the cinders from one end to the other. Clouds of dust 
rose and circled round her enswathed head. Most of it settled 
on the floor and furniture and some of it went out at the window 
she had opened for the purpose. There was an accumulation of 
cinders, as it happened, for Miss McGee had felt too miserable 
since Thursday to sift at all. Now, as she knelt in sackcloth 
amongst the ashes — she felt all of a sudden as if she were 
doing penance for her life. 

When she was through she washed, drinking the hot water 
in sips as she did so: then, attiring herself much as the under- 
graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are said to do for a similar 
purpose, she went to church. St. Patrick’s was not far; it is 
possible that God was just as pleased to see Miss McGee in her 
night-gown with a big coat over it as He would have been 
had she come to Him with an ostrich feather in her hat. She 
knelt, feeling very bruised and broken, her petitions, somehow, 
were formal; when she rose from her knees and made her way 
out of church she did not feel the same deep warmth of comfort 
as usual. She felt as if God were not friends with her — yet 
why? Because she had put Robert off for the evening? Because 
she was still furious with Mrs. Savourin? Because she still 
resented Mrs. Barclay’s speech? Or was it because she felt 
at enmity with the whole world — and herself — and a little bit 
with God? Miss McGee had the sensation of having gone 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


75 

out of tune. She felt that her pitch had quite unexpectedly 
run down and that, though this was perhaps in a sense her own 
fault, yet that it was also somebody else’s fault — possibly a 
little bit God’s. She did not enjoy the early Mass as she usually 
enjoyed it; and when she got back to her own apartment and 
took off the big coat and put her kimono on, and took the tea- 
pot from its warm shawl (she always made the tea before she 
ran over to church — she liked her cup of tea strong ) she did not 
enjoy that either. Something was lacking. Perhaps a bad 
leaf had got in. She drank mechanically and gazed out of 
her window with an unseeing eye. She had not provided 
herself with any week-end novel, she had no Sunday paper 
— she had nothing to read and nothing to think about (ex- 
cept disagreeable things) all day long. It was a dismal pros- 
pect. 

She knew that before very long one of her nieces would 
come in for her on the way to church, and that they would go 
along to the ten o’clock Mass together. This was a family habit. 
Although Miss McGee had quarreled with her sister some 
Christmases before over a plate of cold turkey her sister had 
sent her (as a make-up, since Katie, on account of sickness, had 
been unable to attend the Christmas festivity) the family con- 
tinued to think of Miss McGee as “Auntie” and bore her no 
malice. Miss McGee had resented the turkey as an alms- 
giving (“I ain’t a beggar!”) and she had ever since steadily 
and strenuously refused to see her sister, and so Mrs. Garry 
never came. But one of the girls — there were five of them — 
or sometimes a couple, called in on their way to church every 
Sunday and bore Auntie along. Miss McGee appreciated this, 
though she would never have acknowledged it. She liked her 
nieces. She had been at the birth of each, had received each, 
as it came into the world, in her arms. She had taken her 
share in the bringing-up — had played with them, whipped them, 
admonished them all through infancy and girlhood; and now 
that the Miss Garrys were grown-up young ladies, yes, even 
little Mae ! — smart and self-respecting and ready to be married, 
she liked to look at them and think they were partly of her 
making. She would — though she would have died rather than 
say so — have been bitterly disappointed had one of them failed 
to come for her on the Sunday morning; and now, as she sat 
drearily drinking the tea that had a bad leaf in it, the thought 
that Rose or Nellie or fat comfortable Ag, or Katie that was 
named for “Auntie,” or little Mae — but most probably Rose — 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


76 

would be here before long was the one bright spot on which 
Miss McGee could allow her thoughts to dwell. 

Rose came. She was the one who usually did come. She was 
the eldest of the Garry girls, and she had a strong sense of 
duty. She was a good-looking girl — tall and fair-haired and 
calm, the spit and image of her mother, as Miss McGee said: 
and she was peaceful by temperament. If she leaned to the 
cold side, if she could be something that was not very far 
from being hard, still she was a “good” girl, and it was almost 
impossible to quarrel with her. Miss McGee did not understand 
Rose very well, but she had an admiration for her. Rose was 
so correct. At the Bank where she worked, she did her work 
well: quite mechanically, yet almost always without mistakes. 
Rose was entirely unadaptable. There was not much possibility 
of growth in her. Take her for what she was, and she was 
excellent: ask her to become something — even the smallest, 
tiniest — something else . . . and she couldn’t. She was a 
kind, handsome, unable-to-put-herself-in-anyone-else’s-place 
girl: and Mac, Mrs. Morphy’s best roomer, seeing her through 
a cloud of illusion, loved her. 

“Why won’t ye have Mac, Rose?” Miss McGee said to her 
niece this morning, as they sat a minute before it was time 
to go to church. “Why won’t ye have um, eh? He’s the 
broight lad!” 

“He’s not a Catholic, Auntie,” Rose said. 

Beyond this point it was impossible to get her to go. Mac 
might have all the virtues in the world, but Rose would al- 
ways be unable to see them because of this flaw. Mac was 
not a Catholic, and he never would be a Catholic. He was 
a good sound staunch Presbyterian, and if he had not been 
dazzled by Rose’s complexion, he would have gone on thinking 
(as he had been brought up to think) that Roman Catholicism 
is another name for the devil. Mac’s people, far away in Scot- 
land, agreed in the main with Mrs. Barclay, though they might 
not have expressed themselves with the same strength. Mac 
spoke with the good Scotch accent he had been born to, he looked 
on life with the good Scottish eye; and Miss McGee knew well 
that when she and Rose did go out, they would find him 
(casually) on the side-walk. She knew how he would come up 
to them — much as a big dog approaches those whom he seeks 
to interest, with a wag of the tail and an ingratiating deprecat- 
ing look of the eye. “Good mornin’, Miss McGee,” he would 
say with his eye on Rose. “It’s a fine day, eh?” And when 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


77 

Miss McGee had answered, “ ’Deed but it is, Mr. Fisher Mac- 
pherson” (which was Mac’s name), the conversation would 
languish and come to an end. Rose with her Sunday hat would 
seem to Mac more unapproachable than ever. She would view 
the heavens with her calm blue eyes (but longing, Auntie 
guessed, to speak to Mac all the time) ; and Mac, after a 
moment or so of ineffectual struggle to find something to round 
the conversation with, would give up the job — and the ghost. 
“Well, good-by just now,” he would say — how well Miss McGee 
knew it! “See you later, eh, Miss Rose. I — I thought I’d 
just speak ...” And he would melt away into the adjoin- 
ing landscape and into the next Presbyterian church and into 
despondency and loneliness as he had so often melted before, 
and she and Rose would go on to church — and Rose would 
be miserable. 

Miss McGee wanted Rose to marry Mac. She wanted it in 
defiance of all the ideas and views and religious convictions 
she had been brought up in. She wanted Rose just to marry 
and have a home of her own and children and a man to look 
after her — as she wanted few other things. Rose wasn’t her 
favorite of the Garrys. Nellie, the wee black devil like her- 
self — Nellie the school-teacher that Auntie should have been 
— was that: Nellie indeed, appreciated by the Nuns, and on the 
way, as it seemed, to success in her career, often seemed to Miss 
McGee to be herself in another generation, achieving what she 
would have achieved, had she only had the chance. Still Rose 
was Rose. Rose was the first Garry she had received into 
her arms twenty-three years ago. Rose was the one “Grand- 
ma’a” — old Mrs. McGee — had loved. Rose was fair and kind, 
she never missed coming for Auntie if she could possibly help 
it (whereas Nellie, the monkey, was seldom to be seen) — Miss 
McGee wanted Rose married. A Roman Catholic would have 
been better, certainly; but since no Roman Catholic was forth- 
coming, Mac was the next-best thing. 

“Why will ye not think of um, Rose?” Miss McGee said once 
more, when they had come out of Mass. “Mac’s the good 
fella. He’d make ye happy a’alroight, I guess. He’s as fond 
of ye as the moon’s fond of the stars — think of um, Rose.” 
She hesitated a minute. “Ye don’t know what ut means, me 
dear,” she said, “to be lonesome an’ an old woman all alone 
be yerself. Think of Mac, me choild,” Miss McGee said. 
“Don’t throw um awf loike an old shoe. Good men ain’t so 
easy come by in this loife. Be civil to um . . .” 


78 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

It was not often Miss McGee said as much as that: but Rose 
remained obdurate. 

“He’s not a Catholic, Auntie,” she only said again; and, 
possibly because of Miss McGee’s speech, she wouldn’t come 
in for the usual cup of tea that heartened her up for the long 
car-ride home to Massonville, the suburb on the outskirts of 
the city where the Garrys lived. She just set her lips (“the very 
way Mary’d used to set hers!” Miss McGee said to herself) 
and a hard look came into her eyes — and she set off home. 
“I’ve got to go, Auntie,” she said. “Mother hates ut when we 
don’t get in on time fer dinner Sundays.” 

And she went. 

This was not an inspiriting episode. Miss McGee once more 
thought of the field of grain and felt as if another hail-storm 
had battered it flatter than ever. 

“Rose is one good gir’rl,” she said to herself, “but she’s 
the fool a’alroight.” 

And the idea of Rose at the Bank for ever, getting older 
and older and drier and drier as she did her work in her 
excellent way, became definitely repugnant to Rose’s aunt. “The 
fool-gir’rl,” she thought, “why wouldn’t she think of um!” 
The remembrance of Mrs. Morphy’s tone as she said, “Och, 
ivery woman wants a man!” came across her. Mac, looking so 
nice in his semi-ready suit, “he bought ut a purpose you bet 
your sweet loife,” Miss McGee said to herself; the thought of 
him going on to his lonely church; the feeling of his disap- 
pointment, his sense that it was all “no good,” the dull use- 
less silly Sunday he must be spending — all this was trans- 
ferred to Miss McGee’s own mind: and, since we all feel other 
people’s troubles far more when we have troubles of our own 
to feel, the world began to look to Miss McGee entirely out of 
joint — dislocated at its central line — breaking all to pieces. 

“Sure,” said Miss McGee to herself when she had finished the 
misery of economy that she called her dinner, “what will I be 
doin’ next, in the name of God!” It seemed to her that stay in 
her own dull flat alone with her own dull thoughts she couldn’t. 
“I’ll be goin’ down to Mrs. Morphy’s there,” she suddenly 
thought, with a sense of remorse that poor Mrs. Morphy’s leg 
had hitherto escaped her mind. “Sure I’ll be goin’ down there 
an’ dressin’ the leg.” 

She slipped on the big coat of the morning once more, went 
down-stairs, crossed the court, knocked at the door of Mrs. 
Morphy’s “suite.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


79 

“Come,” cried Mrs. Morphy from the inside; one of the 
peculiarities of Mrs. Morphy’s door was that it was always on 
the latch, hospitably undone so that anyone could enter, day 
or night. 

“It’ll be broighter here p’raps,” said Miss McGee to herself, 
going in at the unlatched door. 

But it wasn’t. Mrs. Morphy was in the dumps too. She 
had been dining not at all economically. The dishes were 
scattered all about the kitchen in the most unpoetic disorder, 
and Mrs. Morphy herself, seated by the fire in an unpoetic 
negligee and not heartened as she should have been by her 
glass of gin, had big tears running out of her eyes and pour- 
ing down her cheeks. 

“How’s all with ye?” said Miss McGee, determined to ignore 
as far as she could the dirty slatternly place and the depres- 
sion of its mistress. “How’s loife, eh?” But when Mrs. 
Morphy’s tears continued to pour, when Mrs. Morphy herself 
shook her head speechlessly without even attempting to answer, 
Miss McGee merely thought, “Sure, here’s another. How could 
I look for somethin’ else” — and she resigned herself to her 
fate. The world seemed more broken than ever . . . 

Mrs. Morphy’s leg was very bad. It was worse. The night 
before it seemed, when Mrs. Morphy had regained the power 
of speech, Mac and Bert Baird (a friend of Mac’s) had said 
to the “Old Lady” as they called Mrs. Morphy, “See here, Old 
Lady, it’s a change ye need. Come on with us an’ we'll show 
ye.” 

Mrs. Morphy had gone. She had put on her best bonnet 
trimmed with bugles that her “swell” daughter, Mrs. Mc- 
Kennay, had given her. She had put on the best gown that, 
since she wore it last (Mrs. Morphy lived in a wrapper), had 
grown too small for her. “Sure, ut wouldn’t button on me,” 
Mrs. Morphy said, cheering up somewhat at the recital of 
her woes, “but the pins hild together be the help of God.” Mac 
and Bert had taken her first of all in the street-car to a Movie. 
Then they had taken her to supper. The supper had been of 
an uproarious nature, with gin and oysters, and, by the time 
it was over, Mrs. Morphy’s leg had become so sore that a street- 
car as a means of getting her home again seemed out of the 
question. Mac had risen to the occasion (“Sure, an’ he would!” 
from Miss McGee) ; he had ’phoned for a sleigh and the bo’oys 
and she had come home in triumph, “singin’,” as Mrs. Morphy 
said, “all the way.” Once home, they had further celebrated 


8o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


the occasion “with a glass,” — and then Mrs. Morphy had 
gone to bed and lain awake all night with the pain. 

“It’s over me days of pleasure is,” said she, and the tears 
coursed down her cheeks more rapidly than ever. “It’s the 
old woman I am now, McGee, it’s the grave that’s before me.” 

She turned up her skirts and began showing her v leg to 
Miss McGee. “Sure, it’s me leg’s gawn back on me,” she 
said. 

Miss McGee sighed. She was past saying much, and indeed 
the sympathy she felt for Mrs. Morphy had in it an element of 
pleasure. She wasn’t glad Mrs. Morphy’s leg hurt her — oh 
no! — but she would have been disappointed had she come 
and found Mrs. Morphy rejoicing in the world and all its 
ways. Now she could feel surer than ever that the world was 
a broken place. It wasn’t just that she, Katie McGee, thought 
so — it was so: it was a place for which no rational creature 
could be expected to have anything but the strongest ab- 
horrence. 

“For the love o’ Mike!” she said, bending over the leg, 
“yer leg’s gawn back on ye a’alroight, eh.” She dressed it 
tenderly and well. 

“Sure, an’ it’s the angel ye are, McGee, dear,” Mrs. Morphy 
said gratefully, putting her hand on Miss McGee’s shoulder. 
“What would I be doin’ an’ you not here!” And in a whisper 
that began to have some enjoyment in it she detailed into Miss 
McGee’s ear the brave fight for independence and bachelordom 
that Dan was putting up against Maggie’s ever-stronger on- 
slaughts. “He says he’s promussed to a widow-woman,” Mrs. 
Morphy said in conclusion, “with feather-beds an’ napery of 
her own.” “They’re all widow-women,” said Miss McGee 
bitterly — she was thinking of Tully. 

Before she went, and quite against Mrs. Morphy’s desires, 
she once more washed the dishes. “Sure, me da’ater Finn’s 
cornin’, me dear,” Mrs. Morphy kept saying. “She’ll fix ’em.” 

“Nonnie Finn’ll not come an’ say ye’ve no one to help ye,” 
Miss McGee answered decisively: and then, as she washed and 
rinsed, she said, “Why will Maggie not come an’ give ye a 
hand, in God’s name? Where’s she that she’ll not help?” 

Mrs. Morphy pointed mysteriously towards Maggie’s room. 
“She’s sleepin’ ut awf,” she said. “Drunken beast!” said Miss 
McGee. “The foine wife she’d make any man.” 

“S-s-sh!” said Mrs. Morphy, but Miss McGee didn’t care. 

“The better ef she does wake,” she said, louder than ever. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 81 

“Sure, it’ll do the punk good to hear what decent folks thinks 
of her.” 

Maggie giving no sign, however, and there being there- 
fore no excuse for a fight — which Miss McGee felt would 
have done her good — there was nothing for it but to come 
away. 

She went back to her own flat with a lagging step. As she 
reached her own door, it flashed through her mind how she 
might go up-stairs — go running lightly up — and tap with the 
softest of hands at Robert’s door and ask. him to come down 
to tea. She thought of his face as he would open the door; 
she saw those pale agate-blue eyes of his suddenly become 
suffused with light — as they sometimes did. She painted to 
herself, in the semi-darkness there of the stairway, the pleasant 
surprise it would be to him — the way his whole face would 
light up . . . 

And then the remembrance of him standing there talking 
with Mrs. Savourin swept over her. “He loikes her!” she 
said to herself. The image of Robert at his own door faded 
away. She saw him merely standing talking to other women 
. . . Miss McGee put the key into the keyhole of her door 
and opened it with a violent push. “Sure,” she said aloud, 
“it’s the poor wor’rld. Why was we ever bor’rn into ut! That’s 
the question.” 

And then, totally unconscious of the fact that she was quot- 
ing Hamlet — she prepared to go to bed. “It’s the only place 
there is, God help me,” she said, “that we kin lie quiet” 

She undressed in the soft winter dusk, turned the key in her 
door, pulled down her blinds with a rattle, and got into bed. 
As she lay there waiting for the sleep that wouldn’t come, she 
felt her cheeks wet. 


CHAPTER XII 

T HE week went on — as weeks have a way of doing — as 
it began: very badly. Miss McGee went on sulking, and 
the world went on appearing broken. She had changed 
her environment. With the finishing of the Athanasian Creed, 
her work for the time at Wellston Road had finished too. 
There was a promise that she would be needed before long to 


82 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


make a gown for Miss Barclay — when Miss Barclay would 
be able to pick up suitable material at some bargain sale. When 
this event happened Miss McGee was to be telephoned for; 
but until it did happen she was free from any more theological 
disturbances. 

She was spending this week — the week of grievance — at the 
house of her “best” customer, Mrs. Glassridge. At this house 
also Miss McGee was accustomed to be engaged for a spring 
week and a fall week; but it was not, as at Wellston Road, 
as an artist she was engaged. At Wellston Road Miss McGee’s 
efforts were looked on with respect. She was regarded as a 
“good” dressmaker, one to whom material could be entrusted 
with no compunction or doubts as to her being able to make 
it up into suitable raiment. Mrs. Barclay and her daughter 
had not soared as yet above the happy medium, the mean 
average; they either bought their clothes ready-made — what Miss 
McGee called “little frocks” — or they had Miss McGee in 
and trusted to her scissors and needle for the result. 

Mrs. Glassridge lived on another plane. She clothed her- 
self in works of art, exquisite in design and charming in texture, 
that were, in exchange for Mr. Glassridge’s dollars, tossed to 
her across the Atlantic ocean. She was a work of art her- 
self when she emerged like Aphrodite number two, clad in 
what it had taken the intellect of Paris to produce. Mrs. Glass- 
ridge was “smart.” She called Mr. Glassridge “Trot,” whereas 
Mrs. Barclay always industriously referred to her husband as 
“Mr. Barclay.” Mrs. Glassridge had what Miss McGee called 
a ly-mousine, and she went out in it when she felt like it; 
when she didn’t she stopped at home and did whatever she had 
a mind to — nothing, usually. She would come sauntering into 
the work-room when Miss McGee was there, and throw herself 
on to the old couch that was allowed to remain there, and negli- 
gently ask Miss McGee questions. “Say, how ye gettin’ on, 
McGee, eh ?” she would say — not that she cared, or even waited 
for an answer, but just because she wanted to say something, 
and that was an easy thing to ask. Miss McGee never felt that 
Mrs. Glassridge was quite flesh and blood. She seemed made of 
something quite particular that had no connection with muscles 
and nerves and bones and commonplace things. As she reclined 
on the couch and asked questions to which she waited for no 
answers, she seemed hardly human at all. Just something 
lovely, exquisite, unimaginable, that Paris had taken it into 
its head to dress — and make. And yet Miss McGee remembered » 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


83 

the time when this wonderful creature was just a manicure 
girl earning her living. Miss McGee knew that Mrs. Glass- 
ridge had once been Queenie MacGowan of the Barber’s Shop — 
until Mr. Glassridge one fine day caught sight of her and 
wrought a transformation-scene. 

Miss McGee was, of course, of no very definite use in this 
entourage. Mrs. Glassridge would as soon have thought of 
giving Miss McGee a dress to make as she would have thought 
of — wearing such a thing. Miss McGee put on little velvet 
collars, or took them off, or, very carefully, ripped some tulle 
or lisse where a capable French hand had put it in, and re- 
placed it with fresh tulle, or lisse — as near to what the original 
had been as she possibly could. Miss McGee loved working 
on the gowns at “Culross,” as the Glassridge mansion was 
rather inappropriately called (Culross — he called it “Kewross” 
himself — was the Scotch village from which Mr. Glassridge 
had emanated) : she loved the feeling of them, and she adored 
the totally unexpected little bits of artistry and cleverness she 
came across. She realized, working on them — turning up a 
hem, perhaps, where it was worn, or fixing a cuff where a stitch 
had come undone, what a different ideal exists on the French 
side of the Atlantic, what finish is put into the work there, 
what brain there is behind those elaborately simple little 
gowns . . . 

Miss McGee would as a matter of fact never have had the 
chance of working on these gowns at all had she not been some- 
thing in the nature of a legacy in the Glassridge establishment. 
Mrs. Glassridge was a second wife; and, long ago, before 
Andrew Glassridge had made, or dreamed of making, his mil- 
lions, Miss McGee had worked for the first Mrs. Glassridge, 
a plain kindly, unassuming woman who had borne Mr. Glass- 
ridge a family (at the coming of which old Mrs. McGee had 
punctually assisted) ; and now she was invited for the spring 
week and the fall week, not because Mrs. Glassridge the second 
wanted her, but because Mr. Glassridge himself saw to it that 
she came. Mr. Glassridge was “one good man.” He was not 
a perfect gen’leman, as Mr. Barclay was, but Miss McGee liked 
him, respected him, was most grateful to him for his advice 
(freely given) as to the investment of a tiny sum of money she 
had once come into from an uncle, Mrs. McGee’s “American” 
brother. Mr. Glassridge had put the legacy in “Steel,” and 
one pleasant thing about the War to Miss McGee was that 
“Steel” was constantly going up and she was as constantly 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


84 

getting bonuses or a little more interest on her “mooney” — 
as she always pronounced that word. 1 

Mrs. Glassridge was kind enough. She wasn’t at all unkind : 
when she thought of it she told her maid to tell the chef to 
give McGee things, going home: and to this thoughtfulness on 
the part of Mrs. Glassridge, Miss McGee owed the nicest things 
she ever took home to Penelope’s Buildings. Mrs. Glassridge’s 
chef was “It.” He did know how to cook. Miss McGee used 
to think, as she ate the little lunches and teas sent up to her 
(in the Glassridge establishment everything was sent up, of 
course), that this was really hardly food at all. It was like 
Mrs. Glassridge’s gowns — like Mrs. Glassridge herself. It was 
something too delicious to be thought about much — in case you 
never could eat anything else again. And here came the point 
where Miss McGee resented Mrs. Glassridge. 

While she was sitting ripping with the greatest care the little 
vests of tulle or lisse — “vestees” was what Miss McGee called 
them — sometimes she would think to herself (the thought seemed 
to come unbidden): “Why should she have all this! What’s 
her that she should have everythin’, an’ me nothin’ at all. She’s 
only a manicure when all’s said an’ done ...” Religion 
was vain when Miss McGee got into this mood. She resented 
then Mrs. Glassridge’s carpets, her old Persian and Chinese 
rugs, her Pomenarian dog (as Miss McGee always called that 
animal) her maid, her husband — her ox and her ass and all 
that was hers. Why should she have a chef, in the name of all 
that was ridiculous? Wasn’t she just a manicure, eh? What 
was that? Very often something it was better not to be. And 
yet, on this special week of grievance, Mrs. Glassridge had 
been more definitely kind than ever for she had taken — a 
thing she had never done before — Katie McGee down in her 
ly-mousine, yes, the real live ly-mousine, to a play, yes, a real 
play with music and singing and dancing and feminine legs 
innumerable. 

Miss McGee was sitting in the work-room sewing obstinately. 
She was replacing a piece of embroidery that was worn, and 
as she did so she was thinking to herself, “Ain’t ut the punk 
wor’rld!”: when into this desert Mrs. Glassridge, in the most 
exquisite of exquisite gowns, had burst. “Come on, McGee,” 
she had said. “Come on. You an’ me’s goin’ to a matineeh.” 
And, before Katie McGee could believe it was true, before 
she had time to regret that her best hat was at home, she and 
Mrs. Glassridge (the Glassridges lived in patrician splendor 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 85 

up on the hill that looked down on Regalia) had been rolling 
smoothly down towards town where the theater was. 

Miss McGee never forgot that afternoon; indeed Robert Ful- 
ton, in the future, often wished she never had gone to that 
matineeh he was told so much and so often about it. He heard 
of the girls’ legs and the little they had on, the ladies in the 
boxes, the chaw’clates Mrs. Glassridge laid on the ledge of 
their box, the way the Chaw-fure sat on his seat of the ly- 
mousine, the way his collar sat on him, the exqtwiteness of Mrs. 
Glassridge’s boots, the way she took the violets out of the cut- 
glass vase of the ly-mousine and pinned them in Katie’s coat. 
It had been a glorious occasion, and Katie McGee was destined 
never to forget it as long as she lived. 

The play had been silly — but Katie had enjoyed it. “Sure, 
Mr. Fulton,” she said, “them legs of the women was somethin’ 
to look at.” The play had been chiefly legs of women. It 
had been centipedal in its dancing and showing of limbs. Miss 
McGee was not alone in her surprise; even Mrs. Glassridge, 
who had seen so much — of legs and other things — condescended 
to say, “Oh my, ain’t ut some stunt, eh, McGee!” She retained 
her manicure way of talking. 

After the play there was tea at Regalia’s smart Hotel “II 
Fomaro.” Miss McGee had had china tea and ’way beyond 
elegant cakes, and she had sat, eating and drinking and listen- 
ing to the band and the monkey-house chatter all round her. 
Yes, it had been a great day. Mrs. Glassridge was kind — once 
she had given Katie a couple of the Parisian gowns she had 
tired of, and Katie had never been satisfied with any dress 
since. She was kind, and it was silly to go on resenting the 
fact that she was rich and that Katie McGee wasn’t. That was 
the way of the world after all . . . “an’ a rotten way — a bad 
way — a punk way.” So Miss McGee found herself suddenly 
thinking as she walked quickly home through the keen air (it 
had not occurred to Mrs. Glassridge to send her home in the 
ly-mousine — that would have been too great an effort for her 
imagination) ; as she went up the well-known stair, it had all 
come back. The quarrel with Robert, which she had for- 
gotten for a moment in the heated air of the theater, Mrs. 
Savourin, the poor leg she had to go out again to dress — Mrs. 
Morphy’s uncared-for state — Mrs. Glassridge’s undeserved 
riches . . . she didn’t think Mrs. Glassridge kind at all; the 
play was fool-stuff, the ly-mousine was wicked, the Chaw-fure 
was only a slave in disguise. Miss McGee went up her stair 


86 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


on the night that made a week from the date of poor Robert’s 
original sin, a socialist, a syndicalist, a bolshevist — anything 
that wants to take from other people all that they have and 
grab it itself. She felt as if she hated Mrs. Glassridge with 
her exquisite gowns. She felt that Andrew Glassridge had 
had no business to make millions— she felt that if she had been 
a bull and seen the Glassridges coming along she would have 
gored them both. Yes, she would . . . ! 

Mrs. Morphy’s leg once more calmed her. There is nothing 
that does calm us like seeing the real sores of humanity. She 
dressed it, and then, having heard from Mrs. Morphy that 
Cassie Healy, in her “attic apartment” was sick, she began to 
trail wearily upstairs, past her own flat, up, up to where poor 
Miss Healy paid nine dollars a month for a room you couldn’t, 
as Mrs. Morphy said, swing a cat in, so help you God. 

Cassie Healy was lying on her bed; not in it, just on the top 
of it, as Scotch people say. She had a bad cold and was 
breathing with difficulty; and, as Miss McGee questioned her, 
it seemed (reluctant as she was to admit it) that she had had 
no work for a week and that she was — starving. 

The room Miss Healy occupied was exactly what it should 
have been. She and it, as she lay on her wretched bed, seemed 
exactly suited to one another. Cassie Healy was not bad: on 
the contrary she was good — a “good” girl, devoted to St. 
Patrick’s, taking her chief joy in life out of the lights there 
and the smell of the incense; and consequently she was approved 
of by both Mrs. Morphy (who always meant to go to church) 
and by Miss McGee (who did go as often as she could). 

“Sure, it looks loike the work’s gawn underground,” said 
Cassie Healy, coughing, and turning restlessly in bed. “It’s the 
bad job for me, eh? I been round an’ round an’ tryin’ an’ 
tryin’, an’ there’s nothin’ to be had.” 

Cassie Healy worked in Jews’ sweating-dens at stitching 
pants. She was a good worker — or “operator” as they said — 
she did her work capably and well; but there were too many 
capable workers and the Jews thought it salutary that all 
should know what being out of work meant, and so they changed 
round at times and took on relays of fresh workers: and then 
the old workers starved until they were taken on again. 

“What does ut mane, for Gawd’s sake, Miss McGee,” said 
Miss Healy, edging herself up in bed, and supporting herself 
upon an elbow. “What’s we here fer, eh? What d’ye s’pose 
is the manin’ of ut all?” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 87 

To remarks such as these Miss McGee had only the answer of 
faith. 

“Sure, Miss Healy,” she said, “we must keep on b’lievin’ an’ 
goin’ to the church. There’s some meanin’ in ut sure, or me 
name’s not McGee.” 

Her anger against Mrs. Glassridge and a millionaire con- 
ception of life evaporated. It didn’t seem real here somehow, 
that conception. It didn’t seem worth while to be angry with 
it, to think about it at all, in the face of such poverty as this. 
This was real. Mrs. Glassridge, however you looked at her, 
wasn’t quite that. She was wonderful and beautiful and mar- 
velous and a sort of miracle — but like all miracles you had 
to believe in her more or less against the evidence of your 
senses. 

“Sure I’ll bring ye the cup o’ tea,” Miss McGee said: and 
then, forestalling Cassie Healy ’s objections — Miss Healy was 
“proud” — she added hastily, “I’ll take me own tea with ye, ef 
ye ain’t had yours. I’ve not had the bite, an’ me head aches, an’ 
I don’t feel like eatin’ at all, God help me, ef I’ve no comp’ny, 
it’s the truth.” 

As she went downstairs to put the kettle on and make the tea 
and bring it all up again to Cassie Healy’s attic, she said to 
herself, “I guess God knows a’alroight, eh. But He acts quote ” 

Miss Healy’s remark, “What’s the manin’ of ut all!” kept 
ringing in her ears. 


CHAPTER XIII 

I T never occurred to Miss McGee to think how Robert was 
feeling. If he did come into her mind during this week of 
grievance, she dismissed him again with a “I guess he*s 
a’alroight!” In her deep unconscious self she knew better: 
but this was the way she chose to look at the matter, and 
she did look at it this way. 

As a matter of fact poor Robert up in his third-floor room 
was faring very badly. He hadn’t the slightest idea what was 
wrong with Miss McGee. He only knew that his one friend 
had suddenly, and for no reason whatever apparently, taken 
herself away. On the Sunday when Miss McGee’s note had been 
slipped under his door, he had been rather specially looking 
forward to going down to her later in the day. He had some- 


88 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


thing new to read to her, and he thought an evening together 
would be very cozy. Then had come the note — nothingness — 
no evening together — coldness — offense . . . 

What was the matter ? 

He had gone for a walk (that refuge of Man) while Miss 
McGee had been wrestling, first with Rose and next with Mrs. 
Morphy’s leg. The weather was dark and heavy; the first 
snow flurry had almost melted and no more snow had come: no 
one knew whether runners or wheels were most appropriate — 
there were both sleighs and cabs to be seen, and each looked 
more out of place than the other. Robert thought as he strode 
through the dismal landscape, that Canada, waiting for snow, 
was one of the most depressing sights in the world. He wished 
even for winter, when the broad river that runs past Regalia is 
frozen hard as iron: when the whole world seems full of frost 
and snow — when there is a curious feeling of being in a huge 
room with white curtains drawn . . . and black darkness out- 
side. . . . 

Had Miss McGee seen Robert Fulton walking through this 
desolation of nothingness she would have felt pleased — or, at 
least, she wouldn’t have felt displeased. He was depressed 
enough even to suit her desires. “Why wouldn’t they pass me 
for the Front,” he kept asking himself. “I’m strong ” And 
he thought with something like contempt of the doctor who had 
turned down his slender, slightly-stooped body as “unequal to 
the strain.” 

As he went walking back to Penelope’s Buildings in the 
dusk, just when Miss McGee was getting into bed, he felt more 
depressed than he had ever been. He was not one to contest 
things with destiny. He was never one of those vital people 
who want to fight. But, as he turned into the dismal place 
he refused to call home, he knew what it means to feel a heart 
sink. His sank so much and so rapidly that it seemed as if 
it must land in his boots and go out by his toes, and as he 
passed the first-floor where Miss McGee’s flat was (he didn’t 
actually pass her door, for his own flat was on the other side 
of the Buildings), something more seemed to pass into his mind. 
He felt, for the second, a faint resentment against Miss McGee. 
“What’s the matter with her?” he said to himself. “Is she 
foolish!” And he had a momentary disposition to say, “Oh, 
very well. As you like” — and be done with the friendship for 
ever. 

However, when he came home from the cheese-and-butter 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


89 

counter at the end of the week — thanking God at least that 
it was Saturday night — and found on the floor as he entered 
his room one of the familiar neatly-folded ill-written notes, 
he did not disdain to pick it up. He was, if the truth be told, 
not sufficiently deeply interested in Miss McGee to feel any 
profound resentment against her. The feeling he had had was 
merely a passing momentary fit of annoyance; when he saw the 
note, he was thoroughly glad to see it. He forgot that he 
had ever been provoked with Miss McGee, he stooped to pick 
up her note, he even opened it rather quickly for him — he was 
calm in all his movements — and he read, with some anticipa- 
tion, what was inside. “Could you cum down to-night — right 
away ” it said — without any beginning such as “Dear Mr. 
Fulton” or anything of that sort. “Sumthin has happened an’ 
I must see you. Miss McGee.” 

Robert regarded the note with surprise. It wasn’t like Miss 
McGee, who, until now, had always expressed herself with 
dignity and calm. The writing, too, was more disordered than 
usual, and Miss McGee’s spelling seemed to have taken to it- 
self the wings of a dove and flown completely away. Robert 
stood regarding the note in his hand — he was not “quick at the 
uptak’,” as Scotch people say; and so it was only after regard- 
ing it for a moment or two that he came to the conclusion that 
Miss McGee was in trouble. That she really wanted him: and 
that he had better go down forthwith. 

He went down and knocked at the door once more; and 
this time, instantly, if not before that, the door sprang open. 
It was as if Miss McGee had been behind the door waiting for 
his arrival, and that, on hearing his knock, she had flung open 
the door as wide as it would go — to welcome him. 

“Oh, Mr. Fulton!” she said. “Come right in, eh. The 
most ah-ful thing has happened. Come on in.” 

Robert came in, and Miss McGee closed the door, and then, 
impulsively, she seized hold of his hand. 

“Mr. Fulton,” she said, holding his hand fast in both of 
hers. “There’s an ah-ful thing come along. I’m dw-graced. I 
don’t know how to tell ye.” 

Robert felt frightened. What had happened? What could 
have happened to upset Miss McGee so? He said nothing, but 
he stood looking down at her with disquieted blue eyes, and an 
anxious look came into his face. 

“It’s — it’s just ah-ful!” said Miss McGee, who seemed un- 
able to get beyond this: and she began to cry. 


90 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


There is something daunting for a man when a woman begins 
to cry. What on earth is he to do? If he is in a position to 
take the woman into his arms and comfort her, that is not so 
bad. There is a distinct pleasure for the v^oman in crying on 
the masculine shoulder, no matter how uprooting the cause of 
the tears may be; even the man may possibly find some con- 
solation in such a process — if the shoulder and the woman 
are a pair. 

But Robert Fulton was not in the position to Miss McGee 
that he could offer such consolation as this. He couldn’t offer 
any physical consolation (the only adequate consolation for 
tears) at all except a pressure of the hand. He put his other 
hand on to Miss McGee’s two hands which were clinging to 
his one hand: and they stood as if the^ were prepared to play 
that childish game of withdrawing the lower hand and placing 
it on the top hand — and continuing, quicker and quicker, until 
the game ends in a confusion of fingers. 

“What is it, Miss McGee?” said Robert at last. “Can I do 
anything?” 

Miss McGee sobbed. 

“It’s — it’s a disgrace,” she said. 

Robert Fulton was appalled. He thought of all the possible 
things that are usually described by that word, and each one 
of them seemed worse to him than the other. Bankruptcy — 
forgery — murder — rape — adultery . . . they none of them 

seemed probable when he looked round Miss McGee’s “apart- 
ment.” But what could be a. disgrace, even here, if it were none 
of these? He stood silent and puzzled, holding on to Miss 
McGee’s two hands in a loose and somewhat inadequate manner. 

Presently Miss McGee disengaged one hand and put it into 
her pocket and got a handkerchief out and blew her nose and 
wiped her eyes. 

“I’m silly, I guess,” she said indistinctly, “but — but I’ve al- 
ways lived respectable up to now.” 

And she began to weep again. 

After a second or two, however, she pulled herself together. 
“Come on an’ set down, Mr. Fulton,” she said, “an’ I’ll tell 
ye about ut.” And, without letting go of his hands (which 
she held on to with her one hand) she led Robert towards his 
usual chair. 

He sat down. 

“It’s this,” Miss McGee said after a bit, in an unsteady sort 
of voice — she spoke bending over him, so that she still kept 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


9i 

his hands in hers — “Ye’ll know ut sure, there was a kind of a 
jig-saw puzzle, eh, about the fellas that lived there opp’site 
me?” 

Robert shook his head. He not only did not know there 
was a jig-saw puzzle, he didn’t know there were fellas who 
lived opposite Miss McGee — or who lived there — or if anyone 
lived there — or anything at all about it. Robert Fulton was 
criminally incurious about his neighbors, and he didn’t know 
the names of any of them at all. 

“Well, there was then,” said Miss McGee, replying to the 
shake of the head. “There’s been fellas there this ever so long, 
an’ no one sensed their names nor what they done fer a livin’, 
nor so much as throw good mornin’ at ’em ef they met ’em on 
the stairway. It’s that slut of a Janitress,” she went on fiercely 
— she couldn’t stop herself now — “the lyin’ cheatin’ punk of 
her. She’d rent to the devil umself ef he come along offerin’ her 
twen’y dollars in his hoof ...” 

Miss McGee pulled herself up and glanced at Robert; but 
he showed no signs of wishing to defend the Janitress. He 
simply hadn’t the ghost of an idea that Mrs. Savourin was 
the cause of the quarrel, if quarrel it was. He went on saying 
nothing. 

“It’s come out now, I want you to know,” Miss McGee went 
on after a second. “It’s out now, God save us. The Pollis 
has went in there an’ what do you s’pose they struck?” 

Robert shook his head. 

“They struck,” Miss McGee said, bending forward and speak- 
ing in a low mysterious tone, “a dope fact’ry there. They been 
manifactrin opium roight opp’site where I room, Sir ...” 

Tears came into her voice again. 

“Them yeller fellas,” she said (Miss McGee used the color 
merely as a term of opprobium), “roight opp’site me! The 
shame of ut — the diss-g race. . . .” 

She stopped. 

There was a silence. 

“But, Miss McGee,” Robert said mildly at the end of the 
silence — he didn’t feel very sure of his ground, so he went 
slow. “It doesn’t matter to you . . .” 

“Don’t matter to me!” said Miss McGee. “Not when it’s 
roight straight opp’site where I lives!” 

She withdrew her hand and stood in front of Robert, look- 
ing down on him. 

“Say, Mr. Fulton,” she said, “where’s yer wits? It’ll git in 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


92 

the papers. There’ll be ta’alk. People’ll say things. I might 
be in a bad house ... it ain’t roight. I’ve held me head up — 
and kep’ meself respectable ...” 

The rest of the statement was drowned in tears. 

Robert felt lost. And he felt relieved. If manufacturing 
opium in the flat opposite hers could upset Miss McGee so 
desperately, then what had upset her before must — in all likeli- 
hood — be something as unreasonable. The quarrel with her 
which never had been a real quarrel because it takes two to make 
such a thing began to pass out of his mind, and the chief thing 
that remained there was a desire to comfort her in this — to 
him — imaginary trouble. 

“I daresay it’ll never get into the papers,” he said. 

“It sure will,” said Miss McGee, out of her pocket-handker- 
chief. 

“No,” said Robert, speaking, for him, emphatically. 

“Or, if it did,” he added, as a sort of safeguarding after- 
thought, “it would be in some odd comer where no one would 
think of looking for it. What would it matter anyway?” he 
continued. “It’s nothing to do with you. You couldn’t help it. 
It’s just a chance that might happen to any of us who live 
opposite people who are ... doing anything.” 

Robert Fulton felt his consolation to be weak — he thought 
the whole thing so silly that he had some difficulty in consoling 
it with any appearance of seriousness at all: and therefore he 
was immensely surprised to see the effect it had. 

Miss McGee brightened up. She glanced out of her hand- 
kerchief, and, though the tears were still running down her 
cheeks, they were no longer desolate tears. They were hopeful 
tears — and the smile that had begun to play round her ugly 
mouth gave promise of a speedy rainbow-effect . . . and a 
general clearing-up. 

“Well,” she said for the fourth or fifth time, “I guess you 
should know, Mr. Fulton.” She gave a deep sigh. “It seemed 
a dw-grace to me ” she said. She once more blew her nose and 
wiped her eyes — and put her handkerchief away, and gave an- 
other deep sigh. “Ye’ll stay an’ take the cup o’ tea with me, 
eh?” she said. “Ye’ll think ut silly. But I’m scared to be 
alone.” 

Robert stayed. There was no special inducement to call him 
up to his cold uninviting room overhead. He knew that if he 
went up there he would have to light his fire, boil his kettle, 
make his dreary little meal himself and eat it alone. It seemed 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


93 

far easier to stay where he was and share Miss McGee’s meal 
and make it up with her again. He stayed. 

“See here, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said when they were 
sitting one on each side of the table and the tea-pot was be- 
tween them, “I never been in any trouble yet. Ma’a brought 
me up good an’ I kep’ straight, so it seemed har’rd ef trouble 
was to come on me now.” 

She poured out the tea. 

“Be-lieve me,” she said with emphasis, “I ain’t one of the 
sporty koind.” 

“But, Miss McGee,” Robert said, chipping his egg, “why 
should it matter to you what they do next door?” The horizon 
seemed so bright and sunny now that he thought he could 
venture to talk sense, perhaps. 

“Ef,” said Miss McGee, bending forward and speaking mys- 
teriously, “they’d been coiners, Mr. Fulton, I shouldn’t a 
said one wor’rd. There’s no har’rm in counterfeitin’ that I see, 
God forgive me. It was the dope that got me goin’. . . .” 

She stopped short, balancing the tea-pot in her hand. Rob- 
ert sat looking at her. 

“Say what ye will, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said, “it’s 
a diss - grace to have the drugs an’ drink made at yer very 
door.” 

She sighed deeply. 

“It was the drink broke my loife all up,” she said — and 
this was the nearest approach to Tully that Miss McGee ever 
made with Robert Fulton — “an’ it fixed me the way I am. I 
can’t bear to think of ut. An’ see here, a dope-fact’ry roight 
at me door ... an’ the Pollis cornin’ in ” 

She stopped. 

“But, Miss McGee,” said Robert again. 

He was about to explain the difference between drink and 
drugs. He was about to enter on explanations of ever so 
many things that Miss McGee seemed to have got inextricably 
mixed up in her head . . . when into his masculine head an 
idea entered. “It’s no good talking to her,” he said to him- 
self. I might talk till doomsday and she wouldn’t understand.” 
Out loud he said, “Well, Miss McGee, it’s over. Don’t let 
us think about it any more”: and he left it at that. 

Miss McGee looked at him, with the tea-pot still in her 
hand. Her eyes were red and her nose was swollen, and her 
mouth had that tremulous look that comes with tears. She 
did not look her best. 


94 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Mr. Fulton,” she said, and a slow, half-childlike smile 
gathered at the corners of her tremulous mouth, “I’m glad ye 
come. It was loike ye to come. Ye’re the goods a’alroight. 
Ye made me feel good. . . .” 

“Ye’ve made me feel good,” she said, “an’ ’twas good o’ ye 
to come. . . .” 

The quarrel was ended. The armistice was signed. Peace 
had come. And if Robert Fulton didn’t know — and never 
knew — either wherein he had sinned or how he had managed 
to comfort Miss McGee so completely — it didn’t matter. The 
way he had sinned and comforted her, too, was by being a 
man. But how was he to know that? 

It was a pleasant evening. Robert didn’t stay long, for 
(unobservant of such things as he was) he saw that Miss Mc- 
Gee needed a rest. She was done. She had found out the 
horrible fact of the opium-manufactory early in the morning 
just after Robert had gone to his butter- and-cheese counter, 
and just before she herself set off for work. She had had 
“words” with Mrs. Savourin, she had gone to work disturbed, 
upset, feeling as if the world were coming to an end ; she hadn’t 
been able to eat all day, she had given thorough dissatisfac- 
tion to her customer, she had come home feeling that she 
couldn’t bear it another minute — that she must pack — leave 
Penelope’s Buildings — that she couldn’t rest there another 
night. . . . 

And then she had written her note to Robert Fulton. 

Now, everything was right again, or almost right. Miss 
McGee said at intervals, “Ef they’d jes’ been coiners!” and 
continued to feel that respectability lay that way. But the 
fact that Robert Fulton was a man — that he had come in re- 
sponse to her call — that he was sympathetic, that they had 
made it up . . . all these things combined to make Miss Mc- 
Gee happy. She was happy. She felt life worth living again. 

“Mr Fulton, dear,” she said — once more she called him 
“dear” — “ye’ll come to-morrow, eh? It’s Sunday . . .” 

And Robert Fulton promised. 

“An’ bring down a piece of stuff to read,” Miss McGee 
continued. “I’m crazy to hear what comes next.” (She spoke 
of Robert’s “Canada Book,” as he was beginning to call it to 
himself, as if it had been “Great Love Gets There Every Time.”) 
“Bring ut down with ye, eh, an’ we’ll make a noight of ut.” 

As Robert was undressing he thought a little about women. 
It seemed to him that they were curious creatures, full of sense 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


95 

and completely lacking in sense, daring and cowardly, open to 
reason yet shut to all logic. He tried to put himself into Miss 
McGee’s state of mind. He endeavored to* think how he would 
have felt — had he been Miss McGee. And he failed. He 
failed. Robert Fulton was a man and Miss McGee was a 
woman, and there yawned between them the fathomless abyss 
of sex — which nothing but sex-passion can even temporarily 
bridge over. Robert Fulton could not any more understand how 
Miss McGee felt than he could understand how the sea feels 
when the moon draws the tide. He got into bed and rolled 
himself round in his poor coverlets and put the effort to think 
at all out of his mind. “It’ll be a pleasant evening down 
there anyway,” he said to himself. “I’m glad she’s all right 
again.” And the thought of “the quarrel” passed out of his 
mind — forevermore. 

But Miss McGee downstairs went over and over the quarrel 
and the reconciliation, too. “Sure he’s a’alroight,” she kept 
saying to herself at the end of each review of the matter. “He’s 
a’aZroight. I don’t b’lieve he meant ut one particle.” (She 
alluded to the episode with Mrs. Savourin.) “The ... !” 
she then remarked, making use of the epithet she had applied 
once before to the Janitress. Then she added, “Bless um, he’s 
only a choild.” And she smiled. The effects of the tear- 
storm were passing off more quickly than usual. There is 
nothing like happiness as a restorer. And Miss McGee was 
happy. 

As she began to go to sleep the making of the opium next 
door presented itself to her mind as a Decree of God. “I 
guess it had to be,” she murmured sleepily to herself. “It’s 
a’alroight” 

And she, too, rolled herself in her coverlets and went to 
$leep. The battered field of grain was right again — straight 
and strong and growing. It had been restored to health by a 
catastrophe. 


CHAPTER XIV 


W HEN Robert knocked on the Sunday evening at Miss 
McGee’s door and she did not immediately answer, he 
merely stood waiting with a perfectly satisfied heart. 
He thought, “Oh, she doesn’t hear, or she isn’t ready, or she 
doesn’t want to open yet.” And he waited where the door-mat 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


96 

ought to have been, not even troubling to knock again. His 
friendship with Miss McGee had taken another step: the ini- 
tial phase of incalculability on the part of each as to what the 
other might be feeling was past. 

Robert was a punctual person. In spite of the artistic streak 
through his temperament (or perhaps because of it), he al- 
ways came when he said he would come, and if he was un- 
punctual at all it was on what is usually alluded to as “the 
right side.” He came too soon. On this occasion it was five 
minutes to six when he knocked at Miss McGee’s door. The 
silence after the knock was broken by a certain rustling as 
of many mice getting back to their holes, or a platoon of rab- 
bits scuttling home to their warrens. It was hardly a noise; 
it was a sort of ghost of a noise. It was Miss McGee, who 
was taken unawares, getting herself and the room and the 
meal under weigh before she opened the door. 

Miss McGee was not a punctual person. Her artistic streak 
took her the other way, and she found it very hard indeed 
to be “on time” for anything. Indeed, her unpunctuality was 
the cause of some of the misunderstandings that not infre- 
quently arose between her and her customers. “Can’t that 
woman be on time!” the customers would say to themselves 
and one another — they strongly objected to five cents’ worth 
of their time being thrown away on Miss McGee’s inability 
to knock at their doors as the clock struck the hour. And 
Miss McGee on her side would say to herself or anyone else 
she could get to say it to, “Oh, why won’t they wait foive 
minnuts, bad luck to ’em, fer a little black divil loike me!” 

Robert had not time to think seriously of knocking again 
before the door opened, and Miss McGee looked cheerfully 
out. “Come in,” she said, “come right in, Mr. Fulton. Sure, 
it’s welcome ye are.” He came in in his quiet hesitating 
way and walked across the room and laid his cap and his 
little roll of papers on the window-sill. He never noticed that 
Miss McGee had on once more her little black-and-white 
striped summer-frock, he never noticed that her hair was 
waved, he never saw that the ends of her person were care- 
fully attended to. He just took it all for granted, as he took 
for granted the bright fire and the tidiness of the room — and 
as he had taken for granted, and never thought of again, the 
yesterday’s disorder and tears and general dreariness. Had 
he had had the slightest sex-feeling for Miss McGee such 
things would have weighed with him — he would have noticed. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


97 

As it was, all Miss McGee’s anxious attempts to make herself 
look at her best, her little wavings and crimpings, her pinnings 
in of artificial roses, her polishings of nails . . . they were all 
as thrown away as if she had pitched her efforts into the 
Dead Sea and watched them sink. But she didn’t know this. 
Love is proverbially blind (just as it is the most keen-sighted 
thing in the world) — and this was one of the occasions of its 
blindness. Miss McGee on this Sunday evening was as blind 
as a bat in daylight, and that was what made her happy. 

It looked very cheerful. No one except a woman who has 
lived alone and done everything for herself can imagine what 
Miss McGee did for her room in that minute and a half when 
Robert stood where the door-mat should have been. She had 
transformed the room in that fraction of time as surely and 
as certainly and as magically as Aladdin ever could do it by 
means of his lamp. Women living alone are constantly taken 
unawares — and they grow a sense of swiftness and certainty 
in putting the best foot foremost. You can knock at the door 
when woman alone is in complete dishabille, and she can 
open that door to you in her best clothes, having tidied up 
the place in the same instant of time, and you will hardly 
be conscious of having been kept waiting. In the fugitive 
diamond of time that had for ever disappeared into the dimness 
of the past between Robert’s knock and his entrance into Miss 
McGee’s “apartment” his hostess had thrown an armful of 
miscellanies into her bedroom and shut the door on them, she 
had edged forward his chair to the best comer by the fire, 
she had given the last touches to the table, she had set her 
waved hair straight in the glass of her favorite picture that 
hung over the mantel (the Sistine Madonna and Cherubs all 
complete), and she had hurriedly rubbed a papier poudre over 
her flushed cheeks and thrown the papier poudre into the fire. 
When one is getting on for fifty and gets the supper, one 
flushes. And red cheeks and half a century of experience go 
not well together. 

Robert, as unconscious of all this as a roosting owl, came 
in, and smiled and took his accustomed seat. He was un- 
conscious of all the things Miss McGee would have liked him 
to be conscious of; but he was conscious of something she 
didn’t know about. He knew of the new stage their friend- 
ship had reached; he was perfectly conscious of the mount- 
ing of another step in their relation to one another, and he felt a 
corresponding security in his friend’s presence. 


9 8 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


What, after all, had happened that this should be the case? 
Well, thotxgh Robert did not put it to himself in so many 
words, Miss McGee had shown herself in a new light. She 
had shown herself, for the first time to Robert, helpless, cling- 
ing, completely devoid of all common-sense. What did it mat- 
ter to her that people (wholly unknown to her) in the flat 
opposite, had made opium in their rooms? Why should she 
have minded that? And why should she have considered coun- 
terfeiters more respectable than they? It was all so absurd, 
and the vision of Miss McGee in tears was at the same time 
so ridiculous and so pathetic that Robert’s view of her had 
— changed. If he had viewed her before merely as an old 
thing of no particular sex who was kind to him, he now 
viewed her as a thoroughly female thing who clung to him in 
difficulties — and whom he could help. A sort of half-ab- 
surd but wholly affectionate feeling had crept into his senti- 
ment for her. He realized she was lonely, that she felt this 
world rather much for her, that he (little as it seemed to him 
likely that he could be a help to anyone) might take a comer 
of her burden on his shoulders. If he didn’t put all this 
into words, he knew it none the less in that sure and certain 
part where we all know things without putting them into words. 
He knew it in the place that modifies our actions without 
our being conscious of its doing so. Robert Fulton did not 
know that his voice was different in speaking to Miss Mc- 
Gee; he did not know that his choice of words had become 
more intimate; he did not know that his very way of coming 
into the room and taking his place by the fire was more 
friendly than it had ever been before. But Katie McGee knew. 
She knew it — instantly — irrevocably; and in knowing it, some- 
thing seemed to flash through her body and her soul, too. 
She — if Robert had only had eyes to see it — almost sported 
the flag of youth that evening in consequence of the difference 
in her visitor. Her eyes gleamed, the flush on her cheeks 
ceased somehow to be unbecoming; her soul, which had never 
taken on the six-and-forty years of her body, looked through 
her eyes and said to Robert’s soul, “Look at me. I am 
young. . . .” But Robert, kind, friendly, as forgetful of the 
old and piteous appearance the tearful Miss McGee had pre- 
sented yesterday as he was unconscious of the spruce and 
cared-for appearance she presented to-day, was immersed in 
hungry thoughts (he wanted his supper), in retrospective 
thoughts (he had been walking all day through the wintry coun- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


99 

try), and in anticipative thoughts (he was looking forward 
to reading what he had brought). He had no time for any 
other thoughts. And so Miss McGee’s soul spoke to the empty 
air and no one took any notice of it at all. 

“Sure, ye’ll be wantin’ yer supper, eh?” said Miss McGee, 
divining in part what was going on in Robert. 

Robert smiled. 

“I’ve had a long walk,” said he. * 

“Did ye go far?” asked Miss McGee. She didn’t care. 
She wasn’t thinking what she was saying. She was really 
entirely taken up with the “dishing” of the supper. But 
she thought it nice to ask. 

“Oh, a fair way,” answered Robert. He had the English 
habit of vagueness. 

In reality he had gone very far. In the morning, over 
his late breakfast with its little Sunday addition of luxury, 
he had happened to glance from his book out of the window, 
and he had seen a fine day, and that had tempted him out. 
There was no special inducement to stay at home. He had 
no one to speak to and his room was not an “enticing” one, 
as Miss McGee would have said, and besides he was glad 
of an excuse not to light his fire — he wanted, like any other 
Penelopian, to save his fuel: and altogether, outside seemed 
pleasanter than in. He had slipped the little book he was 
reading into one pocket and a hunk of bread into another 
pocket. He had locked his door behind him and he had 
set forth for the day. Robert Fulton was a good walker — 
he could keep up his light even unhurrying stride for thirty 
miles if need be, and once he had passed through the sloven- 
liness and casualness that borders Regalia and had struck 
the open country that lies just beyond, his spirits rose. “It’s 
not too bad,” he had said to himself, quoting Miss McGee with 
a smile, and, through the clear sunny day (for the weather 
had found itself again), he had walked, sitting down for lunch 
under a huge maple tree that had shed every golden leaf, and 
under its bare branches returning to Ulysses and his visit to 
th§ underworld, that had formed one of the luxuries of his 
breakfast. He had spent a happy day, far from the butter- 
and-cheese counter, far from commerce of every sort, away 
back in a vanished civilization that seemed to him far more 
beautiful than anything we have to show to-day. “The slaves 
then were better off than I,” he said to himself — but not bit- 
terly. And after he had eaten his bread (which tasted good 


100 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


in the middle of his walk) he had lain down under the ma- 
ple tree for a while and he had looked through the wonder- 
ful tracery of the branches to the clear sky above. “That’s 
lovely at any rate,” he had said to himself. “There was noth- 
ing in Greece to beat that.” And as he lay there he thought 
what the New World might be — if only it were different. And, 
in thinking that, he went to sleep and dreamed a little dream, 
perhaps — and then awakened cold and ready to walk on again. 
As he sat by Miss McGee’s fire he was rosy with the day’s 
exercise — tired but pleasantly tired, ready to relax and be fed 
and talked to and made much of. The open air was coursing 
through his veins, and his heart was pumping his blood round 
in a fine leisurely healthy way. He was disposed to look on 
life for the moment in a rosy manner — to lie back on the 
world and bless it and enjoy himself. Could there be a 
pleasanter guest than that? 

“I’m pretty near fixed, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said, fol- 
lowing up her remark as to how far he had gone; and she gave 
a look into the pot on the fire and stirred the hashed potatoes 
she was browning in the fry-pan. “I meant it to be on tap,” 
she said, “but it’s better the way it is. It’ll be good an’ hot, 
I guess. . . .” 

The meal smelt good to Robert. He had gone hungry all 
day but for his hunk of bread, and he was ready for his 
supper. It never occurred to him to ask Miss McGee if he 
could help. It didn’t come into his mind to see to the toast 
or offer to make the tea. It wasn’t that he wasn’t willing. 
If Miss McGee had asked him to do anything for her he 
would have done it and welcome; but it somehow didn’t oc- 
cur to him that he, a man, would be expected to do things 
like that. He took it for granted that such was woman’s 
work, and, at the bottom of his mind, perhaps, he hardly 
regarded it as work at all. It was odd that he should be 
like that, accustomed as he was to looking after himself. But 
his housekeeping wants were simple. He hardly cooked at 
all up-stairs: he was one of those men who never would cook 
and who would always rather do without food than cook it, 
and he (without specially thinking about it at all) regarded 
men’s work as men’s work and women’s work as women’s; 
and therefore he merely sat and looked on while Miss McGee 
made the toast, and then turned her attention to the hashed 
brown potatoes and the little bit of fish she was cooking in 
the pot and to warming the tea-pot and making the tea. She 


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101 


didn’t ask him to do anything. Somehow it never occurred to 
Miss McGee to ask Robert to do anything. Her brother-in- 
law, Tim Garry, was a handy man; and if it had been he that 
was sitting at her fire-side she would have said to him, “Say, 
Tim, go ahead with them potatoes there, eh, an’ fix the toast.” 
And she would have added, “There’s a good fella,” and would 
have considered it done. But Robert! — no. In Miss McGee’s 
eyes he was different. He was something to be looked after, to 
be taken care of, something that was precious — set aside to do 
better things than dish potatoes or make toast. Miss McGee 
exempted him — she could hardly have told you why — from all 
household cares. Had they been of a suitable age and married, 
she would willingly, all her life long, have worked for both of 
them with all her strength; she would have found it a suitable 
thing that she should earn the money and do the home work, 
too, while he sat expressing his elegant education in a book. 
Miss McGee had a great opinion of the value of the written 
word, even of the word of “Evesham Bobby.” And besides that, 
she would have been happy slaving for him: it is the fem- 
inine way, and Miss McGee was feminine: there is no other 

explanation to offer. 

They enjoyed their meal. It was not as sumptuous a meal 
as the first one they had had together. There was no roast 
chicken this time — but there was fish, and it was all very cozy 
and nice. Miss McGee was not a great cook. She didn’t 
like cooking, her artistic streak didn’t take her that way; but 
on this occasion she had been successful. She had taken great 
pains, and all her trouble seemed paid and paid a thousand 

times over when she saw the hungry man opposite her eat 

round after round of toast with his fish, and help himself 
again to potato, and drink cup after cup of tea. She sat op- 
posite to him, radiant. She wondered if life held a happier 
moment than this. Perhaps Katie McGee had never been hap- 
pier in her life than when she sat watching Robert Fulton en- 
joying the meal she had cooked. There is an intimate close 
enchanting satisfaction in feeding those we love. 

“Did ye walk far?” she said again. What do actual words 
matter when one is happy? 

“Yes,” he said, more communicative this time. “I went a 
good way.” 

“An’ did it look foine?” said Katie. Her Irish accent 
came into play at this ecstatic moment. 

“Yes,” he said again, “it looked lovely to-day.” And then 


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he added, “I sat under a maple tree a long while and I thought 
Canada looked a lovely country.” 

Miss McGee felt pleased. 

‘‘It’s that sure,” she said. “It’s the grand country, Canada. 
There’s space in ut, eh, an’ room to grow. . . .” 

She stopped. 

“Yes,” Robert said for the third time — but this time more 
promptly than usual — “but to grow into what? That’s the 
disappointing thing. There’s room to grow but nothing to 
grow into.” 

Miss McGee did not quite understand so, woman-like, she 
hedged. 

“Ye kin grow into affluence a’alroight,” she suggested. 
“There’s me brother-in-law now, Tim Garry. He come out 
here with nothin’, you bet, an’ look at um now. Me sister’s 
an elegant home, Mr. Fulton, an’ she wants fer nothin’. An’ 
the gir’rls, me nieces, has had an education apiece that’d con- 
tent the king umself. Nellie’s teachin’ now,” she said — and 
she sighed. “An’ that’s what I star’rted out to do, Mr. Ful- 
ton,” she went on, “the teachin’. But Ma’a had no mooney, 
bless her, an’ so I had to tur’rn to the dressmakin.’ I says 
to meself at times,” she pursued after a second, “it’s Nellie’s 
doin’ what I should a-done an’ carryin’ the ambitions I was 
bor’rn out with. ’Tis a comfor’rt, too,” Miss McGee said, 
“to have yer ambitions wor’rked ef it ain’t be yerself. There’s 
a comfor’rt in that.” 

Robert didn’t answer. -He felt the conversation was sagging 
away from what he had meant it to be. He wasn’t interested. 

“Sure ef ye was to see me sister, Mary Garry, Mr. Ful- 
ton,” Miss McGee went on, “ye’d say to the manner bor’rn. 
She plays bridge an’ she’s friends that droives their cars. 
She's grew a’alroight. To look at Mary Garry ye’d never 
say her an’ me come out of the same hole. . . .” 

She gave a great sigh. 

“Sure, Mr. Fulton,” she said, “but this wor’rld’s a puz- 
zle. What for are we here? To git in trouble one with another, 
an’ be broke in sunders because one of us plays the bridge 
an’ dresses in silks, an’ the other goes out and wor’rks for a 
livin’ an’ comes home to a garret when her wor’rk’s put 
through? ’Tis har’rd now, ain’t ut?” said Miss McGee, to 
whom the cold turkey episode presented itself in this fashion. 

Robert went on saying nothing. He was frankly quite un- 
interested. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


103 

“Me nieces is a’alroight,” Miss McGee went on, bright- 
ening up. “They’re good gir’rls a’alroight ef their mother 
is to the manner bor’rn. They comes every Sunday there is 
an’ fetches me awf to the Mass. ‘Come on, Auntie,’ they 
says, ‘come on with us.’ They’re noice gir’rls, Mr. '-Fulton,” 
she said, “an’ mawdest gir’rls, too. I’ll say fer me sister she’s 
brought ’em up as Ma’a’d a-wished. They’re good obedient 
gir’rls a’alroight. . . 

She got up to clear the table. She saw he wasn’t interested. 

“Don’t ye be fergettin’ yer piece now, Mr. Fulton,” she 
said coaxingly. “I’m crazy, sure, to hear ut. . . .” 

Robert Fulton came back to earth, and the present moment, 
and what Miss McGee was saying — with a rush. He didn’t 
care a pin for Miss McGee’s nieces but he did care for his 
book. He jumped up with the greatest alacrity and went 
over to the window-sill and fetched his roll of paper, and came 
back to the table with it. 

“Certainly I’ll read it,” he said in the slightly literary way 
he so often spoke. “Thank you, Miss McGee.” 

And he smiled. 

It didn’t take Miss McGee a second to clear the table and 
put the dishes, aside and roll up the table-cloth. And this 
time she didn’t take even a pretense of sewing into her hands 
to do. She merely sat down opposite Robert and leaned her 
elbows on the hideous table-cloth and laid her face in her 
framing hands: and she sat there looking intently across at 
Robert — and devouring him with her blue-black eyes. 

He read. 

CHAPTER XV 

R OBERT’S ostensible reason for writing his Canada Book 
was to show the effect of Canada on her in-coming popula- 
tion — the emigrants from other lands, but principally from 
England, Scotland and Ireland. He also wished to show 
the effect of these immigrants on the land they came to. He 
had a notion that Canada was just the manual worker of 
Great Britain, and that the nouvelle noblesse of Canada was 
just the manual worker enriched — and exactly as he would 
be had he stopped in England enriched . . . plus the sun- 
shine of Canada and the complete lack of tradition there. 
Robert, though habitually an almost over-modest person, 
thought himself capable of setting forth this thesis, for he 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


104 

considered himself a manual worker, and a manual worker 
who was able to write grammar (more or less), grammar be- 
ing one of the few accomplishments he had been able to 
bring away from a long school and college education. The 
grammar he was right about (more or less), but the manual 
worker part he wasn’t. Robert served at a butter-and-cheese 
counter, of course, and earned his bread (with tears!) there. 
He was surrounded on all sides by manual workers; he talked 
to them — a little; he regarded himself as sharing their lives: 
w r hen he came back to Penelope’s Buildings at night there is no 
doubt that he was in the midst of manual workers, eating and 
drinking like them: but one thing he forgot — he was not mak- 
ing merry like them. His ideas of enjoyment and theirs were 
profoundly different; and when our ideas of enjoyment are 
profoundly different from somebody else’s, we are not like 
that somebody. 

The fact was, of course, that Robert Fulton was not a 
manual worker at all. Everything on earth stood between 
him and the salesmen who counted change into customers’ 
hands by his side. He counted change and they counted 
change, but they did it differently. They were all aware of 
it — Robert and the salesmen, too. Why, Robert’s accent alone 
put a gulf — a yawning chasm — between him and his fellow- 
workers. They knew, as soon as he opened his lips, that he 
wasn’t one of them; and instinctively, instantly, they put a 
distance between them and him: and they kept it. Robert 
Fulton was a worker with his hands; he was democratic in 
his sentiments — he wanted everyone, that is, to have a chance; 
yet, for all that, one of the sentences in the section he brought 
down to read on the Sunday of reconciliation ran, ‘The aris- 
tocratic virtues, so unostentatious as they are, are in a sense 
out of date in Canada and everywhere else, here and now; yet 
until they can be revived in a somewhat different form, De- 
mocracy will go on being what it is to-day, the rule of the 
unfit.’ After that, no more need be said as to the unfitness 
of Robert to begin to write his Canada Book. 

Now, Miss McGee was a manual worker. Her mother had 
been one before her — her grandfather and grandmother be- 
fore that. She came straight off the land, and many genera- 
tions of the land, and the few modern ideas of the city she 
had plastered on to herself were anachronisms and didn’t count 
for much. Even these were the ideas of the manual worker 
of the city; Miss McGee, though she liked fine clothes and 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


105 

well-set dinner-tables and cleanliness and other symptoms of 
civilization, and though she did come into contact with these 
things — distantly — in connection with her work, still looked 
on “the aristocracy” (by which she meant Mrs. Glassridge, 
and possibly Robert) as something with no connection with 
herself. For all the flavor of aristocratic virtue that she 
sometimes exhaled, for all the suggestion that into her com- 
position, somewhere and somehow, there had been introduced 
a pinch of something that had nothing to do with the manual 
worker, Miss McGee was, to all intents and purposes of 
the earth and earthy. She had sprung from people who 
worked with their hands and left their heads alone; she 
knew how workers with their hands feel, what they want, 
why they want it. Her knowledge of the manual worker was 
one that Robert would never attain. Miss McGee knew what 
Robert was writing about as the anatomically unlearned owner 
of a thoroughly healthy stomach knows about his digestion. 
She knew all about it but she couldn’t have told you how. 

All this being true Miss McGee’s sentiments, as she sat 
with her face in her hands, gazing at Robert, were mixed. 
They were very mixed indeed. Once more the actual words 
were often beyond her, but this time the general sense of what: 
Robert was trying to say penetrated deeper than before. “It 
ain’t loike that!” she found herself occasionally saying to 
herself when Robert’s studied impartiality and kindliness to- 
wards the workers (which she understood very well) and his 
evident determination to take their part at all costs, got slight- 
ly on her nerves. 

As to Robert’s assumption — which, too deep for mere words, 
ran all through his essay — that England was the only pos- 
sible place you could set out from and go back to, that put 
Miss McGee in what she herself would have called a quan- 
dary. She was, like all older Canadians, ultra-loyal. She 
accepted Queen Victoria (but nothing later) as something 
God-given and entirely irreproachable. She admired England 
(in a sense); she regarded herself as a British subject; she 
stood up in an aggressive manner whenever she heard “God 
Save the Queen” (which was the way in which she continued 
to regard the National Anthem), and she looked upon the 
Union Jack as the best, if not the only, flag, in the world. 
At the same time Miss McGee was not sorry when she heard 
England had got a bruise. She didn’t want anything very 
bad to happen to England; she didn’t want her even to be 


io6 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


too much shaken up. Still, at the back of her mind, and not 
so very far back either, there was the distinct sensation of 
England having behaved extremely badly to Ireland in the 
past and of her not behaving any too well in the present and 
of herself — Katie McGee!— and all her ancestors back to the 
legendary gentleman before the time of Christ being Irish 
. . . and that she and her ancestors, too, were not going to 
stand any nonsense from England. She had been delighted 
at the time of the Boer War when England had been get- 
ting knocks from the Dutch farmers. “That’ll teach ’em!” 
she had said. She had been equally enthusiastic when the 
regiment of “Irish Rovers” (bless the bo’oys) had been re- 
cruited for the Great War. She had gone to the present- 
ing of the colors at St. Patrick’s, had seen the bo’oys off; 
she had wept over their casualties and prayed for theij 
safety to God . . . and she had been proud that Irish- 
Canada should have gone to the help of England in England’s 
trouble. She loved England to get it hot, yet for all that was 
in her and for everything she possessed, she would not have 
had England suffer a defeat. Canada was the halting-place 
between England and Ireland, and Miss McGee, brought over 
to Canada when she was a child, had adopted Canada as her 
country. When thought took her back across the ocean, her 
blood went to Ireland, her Canadian tradition homed to Eng- 
land. The upshot of it all was that she really hadn’t any 
country at all. 

While Robert was reading she felt, sitting gazing at him, that 
something was wrong. She felt as if her foster-country were 
being set forth asquint. She was exceedingly anxious to 
say something that would set it straight again, but what to 
say and how to say it, she did not know. At the conclusion 
of the reading therefore there was a silence, but it was 
a different brand of silence from that which had greeted Rob- 
ert’s first section of the Canada Book, and both Miss McGee 
and Robert were conscious that it was a different brand of 
silence. Robert waited with a rather pleased sense of an- 
ticipation; he felt he had done, perhaps, not so badly. Miss 
McGee waited with a sense of gathering herself together, not 
for a fight — not that at all — but for a tussle, perhaps. 

She began very much as she had begun before. 

“It’s a grand piece ye’ve wrote there,” she said. 

Robert lifted his meditative eyes from his manuscript and 
looked smilingly at her. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


107 


“Do you think so?” he said. 

Miss McGee paused. 

“Sure,” she said slowly, after a bit. “It’s a great piece 
a’alroight. ’Tis elegant, sure. But,” she went on, after a 
further pause, “I guess ye think England’s It, eh?” 

She attacked the England question first; it seemed easier 
than the manual worker one. She sat looking at him curious- 
ly — half-aggressively and half-affectionately — out of her blue- 
black eyes. 

“Do I?” Robert said — and he laughed. He so took it for 
granted that you come out from Europe and go back to it 
when you can that he was hardly aware of even thinking so. 
He was in the position to this thought that Miss McGee was 
to the consideration of the manual worker. He thought it 
so fundamentally that he didn’t know he thought it. “Do I?” 
he said. 

“Ye do,” said Miss McGee. She paused, drawing herself 
together so that she could express what she wanted to. “But 
Canada’s It, too,” she said, “an’ don’t you forgit ut. I never 
been in England an’ I misremember Ireland, but I seen the 
folks ye sends us out here, Mr. Fulton (at this moment Katie 
McGee was Canadian out-and-out) an’ they’re the rough-house 
lot a’alroight, be-lieve me. It sure takes Canada all her toime 
to tame ’em.” 

This was a new idea to Robert. Frankly, it was a new 
idea. He hadn’t the slightest tendency to evangelize, to “im- 
prove” Canada. He wanted to set her out just as she was 
in black and white and give her her sporting chance. But 
that the European who came out from the other side, rich in 
tradition, if in nothing else, was superior to the Canadian 
with no tradition at all except what he had originally brought 
with him and forgotten, was so patent a fact — to him, that 
he didn’t feel it needed proving. He therefore said with a 
smile, “Do you think Canada civilizes us, Miss McGee?” 
And, as he said it, it struck him as so deliciously ridiculous 
that the smile became a laugh. He laughed. 

“I do,” said Miss McGee, nettled by the laugh. “I sure 
do. I guess ut takes an Englishman a year in Canada be- 
fore he gits on to knowin’ how’s the way to dress umself.” 

This, too, was a new thought to Robert. Up to this moment 
he had taken it as one of the facts of nature that English- , 
men, without giving thought to the matter, were the best-dressed 
men in the world. 


io8 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Oh!” he said. 

“Sure, it’s not yerself I’m thinkin’ of, Mr. Fulton,” Miss 
McGee said politely, “You’re — ye’re different some,” she said: 
and she hesitated a moment. “Sure, anyone kin see you’re a 
highbrow, Mr. Fulton,” she said: then, “an’ a gen’lemen 
bor’rn.” 

Robert started a little. It is unexpected to be told you are 
a gentleman. 

“Ye’re the gen’leman bor’m a’alroight,” Miss McGee said 
positively, “an’ ye can’t git out from under ut.” She hesi- 
tated again. “But them,” she said, “ye’re ta’alkin’ of” — she 
motioned to the Paper — “they ain’t gen’lemen nor high-brows 
neither. They got to learn” 

She stopped again, trying to collect her thoughts. 

“Sure,” she said, “ye seen ut, eh? An Englishman that’s 
been out here a year’s got all dolled up from what he was 
when fir’rst he come. We’ve learned um to be smar’rt. He 
cares . . .” 

She stopped again. 

“You an’ Mitt’s different,” she said. “Youse is gen’lemen 
a’alroight, I guess. Why,” she went on with a touch of pride 
coming into her tone, “them ties Mr. Mitt got into was ele- 
gant things. They was elegant a’alroight, you bet. Canada 
couldn’t a’ touched ’em. You wouldn’t foind the beat of ’em 
search high or low. . . .” 

Once more the sacred name of Mitt fell on deaf ears. Rob- 
ert wasn’t thinking about Mr. Mitt or his ties either. He didn’t 
want to hear about them, so he asked no questions; he just' 
sat and looked at Miss McGee. This time she was interesting 
him. It just began to dawn upon him dimly, as she spoke, 
that possibly there was another side to Canada that, all-round 
and impartial as he had resolutely striven to be, he hadn’t 
managed to set forth. His mind wandered into regions forever 
shut to his companion. 

“ . . . sure, it’s one grand thing,” Miss McGee was saying, 
when he began to listen once more. “It’s the lovely thing 
a’alroight. It has ut so pat ye can’t foind nothin’ to say when 
ye know it’s wrong. . . .” 

With this concluding morsel of praise she gave a deep sigh 
— it rose up in her from the fact that she couldn’t say what 
she wanted, and that she felt things generally too much for 
her; and she turned her eyes away from Robert and sat look- 
ing, rather sadly, into the fire. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


109 

“What do you think people get by coming out to Canada, 
Miss McGee?” Robert said abruptly. 

“I guess,” said Miss McGee, still gazing into the fire, “ye 

git » 

She stopped. 

“Ye git the idea of yerself,” she said, after some struggle 
with herself; “ye ain’t no forrarder, p’raps, to what ye was in 
the Old Country there, but ye feel some different someway. 
I’m the beat of Mrs. Glassridge any day,” she went on, af- 
ter another moment’s struggle. “At least, I guess I ain’t, 
but . . 

She stopped dead short. The person with the healthy^ stom- 
ach who had never studied anatomy was coping with explana- 
tions of the whys and wherefores of digestion. 

“See here,” she said at last. “Mrs. Glassridge got things, 
eh? But that don’t make her no different to me. I guess if 
we was over there” — with one of her ample gestures that showed 
the pinch of aristocracy in her somewhere she signified that 
she meant across the ocean — “we’d feel some different. Well, 
we ain't. 

She paused. She really didn’t feel equal to explaining fur- 
ther. 

“I see,” said Robert. 

And he did see. He saw clearly enough that Miss McGee 
meant that though she had not a ly-mousine or a mansion or 
a tiara or a Mr. Glassridge to provide these things, there was 
no distinction of class between her and Mrs. Glassridge; and 
there still wouldn’t have been even if Mrs. Glassridge hadn’t 
ever been Queenie MacGowan of the Barber’s Shop. Money 
stood between them and money only. Robert Fulton, in see- 
ing this, saw further. He saw somehow, in one of the queer 
flashes that came to him, that there was something in the Can- 
ada Book he wasn’t getting down. He had thought sincerely 
that he was impartial, and that he was setting forth facts in 
the light they shone in; listening to Miss McGee he seemed 
to see another light — up above and beyond his own. He just 
edged off the conclusion — for it was distasteful to him — that 
his facts were set forth in an aristocratic atmosphere and that 
he was not fit to cope with the manual worker — and Canada 
who just was the manual worker — at all. 

“You should write a book yourself,” he said in a jocular 
tone. 

And as he made this slightly irritating remark, the further 


110 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


thought came to him that if Miss McGee did write a book 
about Canada and the manual worker, it would be a book worth 
reading — only, of course, she couldn’t write that or any other 
book because she hadn’t had an elegant education; and if she 
had had such a thing she could have written the book, but 
it wouldn’t have told anything worth knowing about the man- 
ual worker. 

It seemed an inextricable muddle, and though Robert made 
his remark to Miss McGee in a jocular tone and laughed after 
it — it wasn’t a very mirthful laugh that he laughed. Neither 
was Miss McGee’s answering laugh mirthful. They both felt 
depressed. Never had Miss McGee felt so estranged from Rob- 
ert Fulton as at this moment when they sat one at each side of 
her fire, trying to get into line, and not succeeding. It wasn’t, 
as on the first occasion that Miss McGee felt incompetent to 
understand Robert’s allusions. The “big bit,” as she called it 
in her mind, that Robert happened to give to Euripides in this 
section (and who he might be God alone knew!) was of no 
special moment. Miss McGee didn’t care who Euripides was; 
she didn’t want to know about him; his name was enough. 
But she did want to get over the nameless something that all 
through Robert’s paper she had felt was separating them. 
What was it — this thing with deep roots and towering branches 
too — this thing that had endless glistening leaves that flut- 
tered and rustled between them? Miss McGee felt very sad 
as she sat looking into the fire. She had succeeded in nothing 
she had tried in her life. She hadn’t even been able to make 
clear to Robert what it was she wanted to say. And she did 
want to say something — but what? It eluded her. She 
couldn’t get salt on its tail however much she ran after it. 
Robert had had an elegant education, she hadn’t. There was 
the crux of the matter. And gradually she sank into that 
state of mind that says, “What for, after all? What does it 
matter? Why worry!” She sat gazing into the fire and for 
the second she wished it — the book — the reading aloud — the 
friendship — had never been begun. 

“It’s a great piece,” she said, ending where she had started. 

And as she said it, Robert too, felt penetrated with sadness. 
What was the good of it? Why had he ever begun it? Why 
not just come down to the Arundel Market level and stop 
trying about anything. . . . 

“Oh — it’s the merest little thii^g — ” he said vaguely in an- 
swer to her remark; and he stuffed the pages into his pocket, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


in 


regardless of crushing them, and, after a second, got up and 
strolled to the window, and stood there looking out into the 
snowy night. The snow-flakes came against the window in 
soft thick monotonous flakes. They drove against the win- 
dow, and then noiselessly they fell away again and banked 
themselves up in a great downy cushion on the window-sill. 
There was nothing to be seen beyond the snow. The night, 
Canada’s glorious sky, the dull houses across the dingy street, 
all these were as if they had never been. There was nothing 
to be seen but the white regularly-falling snow-flakes, coming 
quickly down and covering up Regalia’s untidiness and un- 
cleanliness and general slovenliness with a great white en- 
veloping mantle. Robert stood looking out into the snowy 
night. 

“Bah, what a world!” he said turning away with a shiver, 
and dropping the blind. 

“It’s as God made ut,” said Miss McGee. 

Robert took up his cap — it was part of his Old Country 
formalism that made him bring a cap on his head to come 
down two flights of stairs from his flat to Miss McGee’s — 
and he came over to Miss McGee and held out his hand. 

“Good night,” he said. 

“Mr. Fulton,” said Katie, without attending to the hand, 
“what makes ye speak that way at teachers?” 

Teachers were her gods. . . . She always felt that if she had 
been able to realize her ambition and “teach school,” as Nel- 
lie Garry did, there would have been little left to wish for. 
To hear Robert say, therefore, ‘Cultured People have been at 
extreme pains to lay hold of the Higher Education, and what 
they really need next is to bring that education into some re- 
lation with life. Before that can be effected the majority of 
them have to forget a good half of what they have so labor- 
iously acquired. They have to come back to the ordinary 
things of life and realize how intimately these are connected 

with the knowledge they have stuck on from the outside — 

this lesson Canada is likely to teach them’ was somewhat of 
a shock. Miss McGee did not exactly know who or what 

‘Cultured People’ were, but she guessed that they were just 

teachers dressed up in a fine way of saying it; and in so far 
as she grasped what Robert meant, it seemed to her that he 
was throwing a stone at both school-teachers and Canada, 
too; and that the stone had fallen short of its aim and hit 
Katie McGee. The fact was that teachers and teaching were 


112 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


no gods to Robert Fulton. He had looked at this particular 
comer of the world from the inside, and things seen from 
that angle are apt to lose — their illusion. Had the Cultured 
People been attacked, it is highly probable that Robert would 
have taken up the cudgels for them, but, writing his little book, 
the reverse of the picture had been before his eyes and he 
had, more, perhaps, for fun than anything else, struck out. He 
had, as Miss McGee put it, “got his knife into” all that was 
not manual worker — for it was manual worker he had set out 
to defend, and the way the “teacher” got into his booklet at 
all was because he represented one of the four “classes” whom 
Robert Fulton allowed to emigrate to the New World. 

A good deal of this was unknown, and likely to remain 
unknown, to Miss McGee. What she did apprehend was that 
“school-teachers” were in some mysterious way being belit- 
tled, and she wanted to know why. “What makes ye speak 
that way at the school-teachers, eh?” she therefore said; and 
she sat, with her head on one side, rather like an inquisi- 
tive bird, waiting for an answer. 

Something in Miss McGee’s tone, or in the turn of her 
head, perhaps, amused Robert. It struck him as funny, this 
worship of hers for the teaching profession. In his turn he 
said, “Why?” A sentence of his apropos of the same subject 
‘Canada will relieve these academicals of the Cultured Man’s 
burden — the little more of learning than they can comfortably 
carry — and how heavy indeed it is!’ came into his head, and 
this again amused him: he smiled. His slight ill-humor 
against Miss McGee and the world, too, began to pass away. 
He laughed, a pleasant hospitable laugh that had power to dis- 
sipate entirely the sadness that had fallen between them. 

“Well, you see,” he said, “I was a teacher myself once, 
so I know how it feels to be one — and what it means to other 
people too.” 

“Ye were a teacher?” said Miss McGee. You could have 
knocked her over with a feather. 

‘That’s what I came out to Canada to be,” Robert said. 
“But I didn’t like it, and Canada didn’t like it — and so I’m 
not one now.” 

“Well!” said Katie. 

She sat in her chair beside the fire looking up at Robert, 
and once more she rearranged her ideas of him. He had been 
a teacher. He had realized those inmost ambitions she had had 
for herself, and he had thrown them up. She looked at him 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


113 

as if she would like to look into and through him and away 
out at the other side. 

“No,” Robert said, answering her look. “I didn’t like it, 
Miss McGee; I’m sorry, but I didn’t.” He stood with his 
cap in his hands looking down at her, and somehow he looked 
very boyish and young. “You wouldn’t have liked it either, 
though you think you would,” he sa^d — and there was al- 
most a roguish look in his blue eyes as he watched her dis- 
comforture. “Teaching isn’t all it says it is.” And then he 
laughed and said, “be-lieve me!” 

“That’s Canadian a’alroight, ain’t ut?” he asked, and they 
both laughed heartily. 

But when Robert had gone away with his cap in his hand 
and a bit of his crushed manuscript sticking out of his pocket, 
Miss McGee sat where he had left her — thinking. Had she 
had the bad habit of using threadbare quotations to express her 
thoughts she might have said, “There are more things in a 
Robert Fulton than are dreamed of in a Miss McGee’s phil- 
osophy.” Not knowing this quotation, she didn’t quote it; but 
she difl say, “Oh my, sure I never did !” — which possibly 
amounted to much the same thing: so Miss McGee was once 
more quoting Hamlet without being aware of it. She rose up, 
raked out every cinder in the grate, and stood with the poker 
in her hand, gazing down into the black nothingness she had 
made. She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Sure, 
my, ain’t he the limutt, eh!” she remarked. She went to bed. 


CHAPTER XVI 

T HE thing, however, in Robert’s Paper about which Miss 
McGee had make no remark at all was the thing that 
had interested her most. This was characteristic and 
feminine. 

When men talk, either in public or private, and women lis- 
ten, what the women are thinking behind the kind of attention 
they seem to be giving is, “What sore of husband would 
you make? What sort of lover? Are you a father — would 
you like to be one?” It is possible that when a man listens 
to a woman holding forth, under his polite inattentiveness he 
may be thinking, “What sort of woman lies under that flow 
of words? Would she make a home?” — this may be so: with 


U4 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


the woman it is invariable, hotly as she might often protest 
it wasn’t. What interests a woman is a man. She doesn’t 
care what he thinks about politics or philosophy. His dreams 
of poetry or painting are nothing to her. His opinions, his 
views, even his ambitions as to his profession (though these 
come nearer it) are immaterial to her. What she cares about 
is the man. 

Robert Fulton, in sizing up his third class of immigrants — 
clerks and stenographers who come to the Dominion — had 
touched on “Woman.” Three-fourths of these stenographers and 
clerks are women; women taken in bulk is “Woman”: and 
“Woman” is a professional entity with a career of her own 
and not so very different (in a mere matter of writing a book) 
from “Man.” This abstraction was completely unknown to 
Miss MeGee. 

It may seem odd that this was so. By the year 1917 it 
was hardly a new thing that women should go out into the 
world and have “careers.” But Miss McGee lived in Canada; 
and in Canada, up to the time of the Great War, women didn’t 
have “careers”; they did not even go out into the world and 
earn their bread unless they didn’t happen to get a husband; 
and as up to 1914, there were, roughly speaking, enough men 
to go round, Canadians (with a very rare exception) paired 
off as if they were going into the Ark, and the Woman Ques- 
tion, which people everywhere still have an inclinatipn to spell 
with capitals, had not emerged on the horizon. By 1917 it 
was still too new to have reached Miss McGee. 

Besides this, Miss McGee belonged to the workers, and with 
them the woman question is a simple thing, not worthy of any 
capitals at all. Girls go out to work, perhaps, but with the 
expectation of matrimony in their minds. They do marry 
more often than not, and there is the end of it. Miss McGee 
thought like this: she regarded a woman as a home-keeping 
animal; a thing that got married as soon as it could and kept 
a house and bore children and saw that those children got a 
chance in the world (to the best of her ability) when they 
were ready to go out into it. If the children were daughters, 
they did as their mothers had done before them, as quick as 
ever they could. If things went wrong, then women were old 
maids, creatures who had missed their vocation in life — fail- 
ures who were only fit for the scrap-heap. Miss McGee re- 
garded herself in this light. Her work had no romantic ap- 
pearance in her eyes; it was merely a means of gaining bread, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


115 

and no more than that. It is true that she did sometimes make 
a show of resistance to the old maid point of view by parad- 
ing the Church’s teaching of the value of virginity. But this 
was usually when Mrs. Barclay insisted on pitying her lonely 
condition and was “kind.” Then Katie McGee did proclaim, 
so that it could be heard from one end of Regalia to the other, 
that virginity is the highest thing; that it is not only prefer- 
able, but immensely and incontrovertibly superior, to the com- 
pletest married state; and that, consequently, she — Katie Mc- 
Gee — in the eyes of the Church and of God, was at least one 
rung higher in the spiritual life than Mrs. Barclay, whose 
daughter bore constant witness to the loss of the desired state 
in her mother, could ever hope to be. Miss McGee pounded 
this view into Mrs. Barclay for all she was worth — on oc- 
casions; but when she left Wellston Road she always found 
such an elevated position difficult to maintain; and by the 
time she arrived at Penelope’s Buildings she usually felt she 
was not only a virgin but an old maid too. A married wom- 
an had things very comfortable; Mr. Barclay, though he could 
not be in any way compared with Andrew Glassridge as a 
general provider, yet was eminently desirable both as to 
income and generosity. When there was no Mrs. Barclay on 
the tapis what Katie McGee really felt was that there is but 
one true career for women — marriage; and that, when she has 
not achieved that career, she is, socially speaking, bankrupt 
and of no account. 

Imagine then how surprising to hear Robert read ‘the wom- 
en-workers who go out to Canada in an odd way mold the 
Dominion; they at least accustom Canada to the idea of wom- 
en occupying themselves with something else than the domes- 
ticities: and disconcerting as that doctrine frequently proves to 
be, yet it has, most certainly, to be accepted before general 
harmony can be restored.’ 

He evidently looked upon women “working” as Miss Mc- 
Gee compendiously called it, as something not only natural but 
durable; a woman, apparently, in Robert’s point of view, could 
go on being unmarried to the end and yet be something. Queer! 

It was more puzzling still to Miss McGee because she had 
always sized up Robert as knowing nothing about women. He 
had never seemed to her to think of such things. When she had 
spoken of her nieces he had never said, “Is she pretty,” or, 
“who does she meet up with?” or anything natural of that 
kind. He had shown no interest at all. He generally refused 


n6 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


to be interested even in the Mrs. Glassridge tales, though oc- 
casionally he did condescend to be entertained by these. And 
he never said, “Oh, how like a woman!” or, “No one but a 
woman would say that!” No, Robert did not seem to Miss 
McGee to know anything about the sex. “Bless the bo’oy,” 
she was accustomed to say when he struck her in this light, 
“he has ut all to lear’rn” — she alluded to the sexual side of 
women. Not even his conversation with Mrs. Savourin on the 
doorstone had really shaken this conviction; Miss McGee knew 
well enough (though nothing earthly would have induced her 
to admit it) that Robert was only talking to the Janitress 
(almost) as he might have talked to a man. . . . 

And now, see here, this innocent was suddenly launching 
theories on the very subject he had been supposed to know 
less than nothing about! What should he have to say about 
women coming to Canada? His remark was as disconcerting 
to Miss McGee as the coming of “Woman” was, in Robert’s 
idea, disconcerting to the Dominion. 

In Miss McGee’s experience men were interested in wom- 
en from the sexual point of view and from that point 
of view only. A short sharp and furious period was fol- 
lowed, in Miss McGee’s experience (when things went right) 
by a long dull period when the man addressed the woman 
as “Mother” in an essentially married tone of voice. And 
then they died. Such, for Miss McGee, were the relations 
of the sexes. The woman was an appendage of man — she 
bore the man children and she looked after them and him in 
return for being married and “done for”; and if she didn’t 
do this she was a virgin of exceedingly high repute or a poor 
little insignificant old maid whom everyone very naturally 
looked down on and patronized. There were others too, of 
course. But Miss McGee alluded to these as “punk,” and 
dismissed them from her mind. 

Was it possible that there was yet another way? Could 
women be things that had work to do much as men had? 
Could they make that work their life — as men mostly did? 
And if this was possible, were they entitled to the same amount 
of space in the world as men normally took up? And if so, 
would the world be big enough for them both? 

Katie McGee not only thought about this all the time Rob- 
ert was reading — it lay below the surface irritation she had 
felt in -listening to him laying down the law about the man- 
ual worker he knew so little about — and after he had done 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


117 


reading, and during the following days she went on thinking 
about it. It was as if an entirely new view of the world 
had been opened up to her. She felt suddenly as if some- 
thing bigger than she had ever known about before lay all 
round her; and that she was free to wander in that bigness — 
if she only would. Her own work began to seem to her some- 
thing more definitely real than it had ever been before. She 
was one of those women whom Robert was talking about 
who was occupied ‘with other things than the domesticities,’ 
as he magnificently put it. Miss McGee liked words in five syl- 
lables when she “got” them, as she said. They seemed to her 
worth while. She was occupied with things other than the 
domesticities. She went out, just as a man might, and earned 
money and came home again. Did she, too, ‘mold the Do- 
minion’? she wondered. 

As she wondered something darted into her mind. Mitt, 
long ago, had had an embryonic something (only Miss McGee 
didn’t put it that way) of what Robert had so astonishingly 
revealed. Mitt, too, had regarded women as things that might 
go on earning their livings all their lives (yes, and sometimes 
earn the man’s living too) without the slightest sense of deg- 
radation. She remembered a discussion between Mitt and 
herself. “Say, listen here,” she had said on that occasion, 
“that’s silly” And when Mitt had said “Why?” she had had 
no answer to give him. As she pondered over Robert’s more 
recent remarks, another idea flashed on her. “Be the glory 
of God,” she said, borrowing Mrs. Morphy’s phraseology, “ ’tis 
English! Sure, that’s what ut is.” She sighed the sigh of re- 
lief. As she made the discovery she was on the way to a 
very pemickity customer with whom she knew she would have 
a bad day; but that didn’t seem to matter. “Sure, ’tis Eng- 
lish!” she said; and she stood stock still in the Canadian 
road and gazed triumphantly over the Canadian landscape. 
‘Mold the Dominion!’ she said. “The poor lambkin choild.” 
Once more Robert presented himself to her as an innocent boy 
that had had no experience of the essentials of life. “ ’Tis the 
quare country England, eh!” Miss McGee said to herself. 
“ ’Tis the square things they thinks there, sure.” She felt, all 
down her backbone, that it was Canadian and not English she 
was; and deeper than the backbone — in the marrow itself — 
she felt she was Irish. The homing tradition of “back to 
England” seemed little better than a myth. She went scur- 
rying through the Regalian suburb — she was five minutes late 


1 18 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


as usual — and she laughed as she went. Women were wom- 
en after all, marriageable creatures, virgins on Sundays, old 
maids all the rest of the week. . . . 

Old things are best! 

Yet the oddest part of the business was that Katie McGee’s 
work, after this reading of Section II of the Canada Book, 
took on to itself another complexion. She somehow had never 
felt before that her work was in any way important; it was 
just a means of gaining bread to eat. But now, in spite of 
the kindly scornful laugh in the middle of the Regalian sub- 
urb, she began to feel that this work of hers was Work; and 
that she, though undoubtedly an old maid (and a virgin) was 
also perhaps Woman. The day with the pernickity customer 
was unable to put her out. Work was Work whoever did it. 
Next time Mrs. Barclay had anything to say about old maids 
— look out! 

Possibly the most definite thing that Section II of Robert’s 
Canada Book achieved was something that Robert had never 
even thought of. It established in Miss McGee’s mind the 
gender of Work. She had never known before that it was 
neuter. 


CHAPTER XVII 

T HERE had been so few pleasant events in Miss McGee’s 
life that she might be excused, perhaps, for referring over 
and over again to the few that had come her way. Of 
these the great and principal event was the visit to New York 
after her mother’s death; and the principal event that had oc- 
curred while she was there was the hearing of a pianist — who to 
Miss McGee always remained “the bo’oy with the velvet jack- 
ut.” There were other things. Mrs. McGee had missed no free 
treat during her stay in New York City. There was, for ex- 
ample, a young lady who had posed beside a fountain in a 
Spring Show. She had been clad in a shimmering gown that 
looked loike a thing ye moight see in a dream. “An’ say, 
my dear,” Miss McGee was accustomed to say — when she 
wished to be business-like she said “my dear,” and when she 
wished to be affectionate she said “me dear” — “I wisht you 
had saw that young lady there.” She always paused and 
gasped a little here. “She was elegant a’alroight,” said Miss 
McGee. “She was i-deal; be-lieve me.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


119 


Here Robert would grunt. 

“Sure, ’twas a thing ye’d dream of,” Miss McGee would go 
on. “Ye never did saw the beat of that in all yer loife, Mr. 
Fulton.” 

She would stop, and a hushed sort of look would come into 
her face. 

“Do ye know, me dear,” she would say, “when ye see some- 
thin’ that’s ’way beyond lovely the way ut makes ye shiver? 
Ye feel sad. . . .” 

Miss McGee would look wistful. 

“Would ye tell me why is that?” she would ask. 

But Robert was never equal to explaining that mystery; and 
the young lady would, each time she thus entered into the con- 
versation go, at this point, the way of all flesh. 

Robert was frankly bored with Miss McGee’s impressions 
of New York. He didn’t like her friend Beta Hendricks who 
was Matron of a small Maternity Hospital there. He couldn’t 
bear her cousin, Mrs. Weltman (the one from whom Miss Mc- 
Gee got the annual letter) ; nor did he like Mrs. Weltman’s 
husband, Jo; and least of all could he put up with the daugh- 
ters Maybelle and Marianne, who always figured in Miss 
McGee’s stories as Polly and Belle. When they came deter- 
minedly into the conversation Robert always found that it was 
time for him to go to bed. 

The bo’oy with the velvet jacket was, perhaps, the most 
bearable of the lot. He certainly was the one whose simple 
history Robert had heard most often. 

“Onest I was smoochin’ around,” Miss McGee would say, 
“an’ I see in a store there a tickut in the window sayin* 
there was a concert in the back-store an’ ’twas free to come 
in. So I gawn in. . . .” 

She would stop. 

“When I gawn in,” she would go on after a bit — and her 
voice always dropped as if she were telling a ghost story and 
was nearing the point, “say, what do you s’pose I struck?” 

Robert always went on supposing nothing. 

“ ’Twas a bo’oy in a velvet jackut was playin’ in there, 
bless um,” Miss McGee would say, “an’ oh, Mr. Fulton, see 
here. ...” 

She would stop: and here the young woman posed beside 
the fountain in her shimmering gown faded all away into 
nothingness. 

“Sure,” Miss McGee would say, relapsing into Irish pure and 


120 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


simple, “he played loike the wind an’ the loight. He played 
the way he’d make ye think of the stars. He was loike a 
stream cornin’ roarin’ down a hill — an’ the green rushes be 
the soide of ut. He made ye la’aff — an’ cry. He made ye 
glad ye was bor’rn an’ wish ye was dead. . . 

And then usually, words here failing Miss McGee, she 
would declare he was elegant and ’way beyond it, and Rob- 
ert would squirm in his chair. 

When the winter had well descended on Canada and Re- 
galia was white — white, wrapped deeply in snow, Miss Mc- 
Gee came back one night from her work in a supreme state 
of excitement. New York was about to reincarnate itself in 
Regalia city. 

“What d’ye think, Mr. Fulton, eh?” she said to Robert, 
whom she had summoned to a conference by note, “say, what 
d’ye think, eh? That young fella in the velvet jackut I 
heard that toime in New York city is cornin’ on here!” 

She paused to see how the news would affect Robert. And 
she did feel appreciably disappointed when it didn’t seem to 
affect him at all. He had had a bad day in the butter-and- 
cheese hole, the store had been cold — war-time scarcity of 
fuel had begun — the customers had been maddening, he was 
so tired and dispirited and lethargic that if you had told him 
the archangel Gabriel was coming to Regalia to give a re- 
cital on his horn he wouldn’t have stirred a muscle. 

“Ye’ve not forgot me tellin’ ye the way the bo’oy played in 
New York City, eh?” said Miss McGee tentatively. She saw 
Robert was not interested. 

“No, no, I’ve not forgotten,” Robert said. He said it hastily, 
for he was afraid if he gave Miss McGee time she would 
start off telling him all about it again — and that he felt he 
could not bear. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I remember.” 

There was a silence. Miss McGee had had a plan to un- 
fold but this lack of energy on the part of Robert chilled her, 
and she felt as if perhaps it would be better to keep her plan 
folded up in her head. However, she was full of her sub- 
ject and longing to let Robert into her plan, and so, after a 
second or two, she went on a little further. 

“Ye’d like to hear um, eh?” she said, once more tenta- 
tively. And then she added impressively, “He’s an ar-rtist, 
moind.” 

She waited. 

“I’m not very fond of music, Miss McGee,” Robert said. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


121 


And then, after this ungracious remark, something made him 
glance towards Miss McGee, and he felt perhaps rather than 
saw her disappointment. 

“You mean you’d like to go and hear him?” he said. 

Miss McGee did not need to answer. It was as if some- 
thing electric had flashed through her, and she had broken 
out into light. She sat gazing at Robert with her blue-black 
eyes, and her soul seemed to be looking through those eyes, 
and for a minute she said nothing. 

“D’ye think we could go,” she said then, “Dutch treat, eh?” 

“I invite you to go with me,” said Robert, most unexpect- 
edly — and he laughed a little. There was something infec- 
tious in Miss McGee’s breathless joy. “Damn the expense,” he 
said — also unexpectedly. And he laughed again. 

The next day when he went “in his lunch-hour,” as Miss 
McGee called it, along to the theater where the concert was 
to be and paid down a whole dollar and a half, he didn’t 
feel quite so enthusiastic, perhaps. The worst of just not 
gaining enough to live on is that it cramps life everywhere. 
Robert would sometimes have most willingly broken into flow- 
er and expanded in the sunlight; but just so soon as he made 
even a bud — it was nipped in the frost of not enough cents 
to go round. He bought the tickets, and put them in his 
pocket — where the dollar fifty had been; and as he walked 
away from the theater, he caught himself thinking, “What a 
lot of money! What a lot of things I could have . . .” — 
and there he checked the thought. But it had been there. 
There had been a moment when he was out-and-out sorry that 
he had indulged Miss McGee; and even after he had pushed 
down the thought, it came pushing and pushing up again. He 
denied himself so much — in books, in clothes, in food, in ev- 
erything, that it seemed almost criminal to be throwing away 
money on a concert, for which he felt he wouldn’t care. It 
wasn’t until he handed over the tickets to Miss McGee at night 
and watched the color come surging up into her soft worn 
cheeks that he felt really comforted. “Shefll like it,” he 
thought; and yet, unwillingly, behind that kindly pleasant 
thought — even then — the other thought kept obtruding itself 
“What a lot of money. What a lot. . . .” 

There really isn’t any denying that poverty is an ungracious 
thing. 


122 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


CHAPTER XVIII 

I T is not too much to say that from the time when Robert put 
the tickets into her hand to the moment when they made 
their way together to the cheapest seats in the house and 
sat themselves down on them, Miss McGee thought of noth- 
ing but the concert. It was the very first time in her life 
that she had ever been to a paid-for seat at a real live pro- 
fessional concert. So it was an experience for her. She loved 
music. She had an inborn sense of melody and rhythm. She 
had thought of this concert all week and every minute of the 
week. She had thought of it as she was walking to her work, 
as she was cutting out and planning and piecing together and 
sewing and machining for her customers; she had thought of 
it coming home, while she was eating her poor supper — as 
she was undressing, even, yes, even then! — in her prayers. 
Miss McGee felt ashamed that she could not banish the 
bo’oy (God bless um!) out of her devotions, but she couldn’t. 
He obtruded himself between Miss McGee and God, and the 
thought of the melody that he was shortly to pour into her 
soul intoxicated Miss McGee and sent the blood spinning 
through her body — even in a kneeling posture. 

Robert and she arrived in good time. They looked a nice 
couple. Robert was neat and well-brushed as ever, and he 
looked, as Miss McGee said over and over to herself, a gentle- 
man. He had indeed that unobtrusive quiet appearance that is 
the essence of looking like a gentleman; had you met him in a 
public place you couldn’t have mistaken him for anything but 
what he was — a man of breeding and culture; in this instance 
Miss McGee was right. 

She herself looked well. In an odd way Miss McGee al- 
ways looked “all right” in the old clothes that were all she 
had to wear. She was ugly. She was poor. But she had 
something — the thing that makes a beau laid — that she had 
resurrected from some long-dead ancestor, perhaps. At any 
rate it was there. She had it, and her “something,” set her 
apart. Even Mrs. Glassridge in the fashionable hotel had 
not felt in the least ashamed of her companion. 

To-night she was all a-twitter. She could hardly contain 
herself at all when she thought that here at last she was to 
see the bo’oy she had seen eleven years before in the room 
behind the music-store. Quite irrationally she expected to see 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


123 

him still in his velvet jacket, and when (eleven years later as it 
was) he came on the platform clad in the usual garments worn 
by the concert-giving male she was for the moment disappointed. 

“Bless the bo’oy, he’s growed-up, eh,” she said in a discon- 
certed tone: but when he had sat down to the piano and run 
his fingers — they were long delicately-tapered ones, just what 
the Public demands of a musician and so seldom gets — over 
the keys, she was reconciled to anything. 

She was reconciled to life as she listened. It seemed to Miss 
McGee as she watched those white hands moving on the 
ivory keys that they were putting a poultice on her soul. All 
her bitterness against life — and Miss McGee was bitter with 
life for not having given her what she thought it should — 
passed away. She forgot that the world had been more or 
less of a disillusionment. She forgot that she often said to 
herself she wished she were dead. She simply sat bent a 
little forward, drinking in the sweet and lovely sounds that 
“the bo’oy” drew from the keys. The theater and the rows of 
faces passed away from her, it seemed to her as if she were 
alone with this great magician who could draw sound from 
wood and metal and ivory — and enchant the soul. She felt 
that life is a beautiful thing — a charming and tender thing, 
and at the same time a thing ineffably great. . . . 

Robert Fulton was not fond of music in the way Miss McGee 
was. He liked it. It gave him a calm pleasure to listen to 
music beautifully made, as this man made it, and his study of 
specialized art of other kinds helped him to understand in a 
way that Miss McGee couldn’t. They sat beside one another, 
their elbows touching sometimes as they leant on the arms 
of their chairs . . . and their spirits were leagues — worlds — 
away from each other. Robert’s spirit was well in hand. It 
was in this world, inside himself, listening, and enjoying 
what it heard. But Miss McGee’s spirit was in some other 
world, floating about in the ether, mystic, understanding mystic 
things — immensely happy. . . . 

When “the bo’oy” stopped and the applause leapt out, there 
seemed nothing to say. Miss McGee’s spirit, brought back 
abruptly from its wanderings, felt giddy. She turned and 
looked at Robert, and her eyes were dazed. 

“The bo’oy!” she said. 

“Isn’t it a beautiful genius?” a voice said behind; and at 
the English sound of it Robert turned involuntarily. 

Yet it was right, this English voice. It was a beautiful 


124 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


genius that was opening itself out before them. “The bo’oy,” 
as he sat at the piano, was tossing rhythmic bits of his soul 
amongst the audience, and they were catching them as they 
could, and the bits of the soul were beautiful. There are 
all kinds of genius. There is genius that is great and power- 
ful and ugly, and that kind of genius we acknowledge reluc- 
tantly; and there is genius that is tender and wise — that we 
love to be near; and there is genius that is radiant and beau- 
tiful . . . and this player’s genius was of that sort. Robert, 
unmusical as he was, felt the influence of it. And Miss McGee 
was silenced — awed — made incapable of speech. . . . 

It wasn’t till they were coming home together that Miss 
McGee found her tongue. 

“Sure, Mr. Fulton,” she said, “it’s the grand treat ye been 
after givin’ me.” She stopped. “I’m glad ye’ve gave ut me,” 
she said. “I’d sooner take a treat at your hands than at 
anyone else’s.” She stopped again. “I’ll think of ye together,” 
she said, “you an’ the bo’oy.” 

And then she stopped a long long time. 

“I knew um,” she said, as they were turning in at the door 
of Penelope’s Buildings. “I knew um for an ar-rtist the time 
I heard um years ago.” Miss McGee looked up into Robert’s 
face and the light of the hall-lamp fell on her face. 

“It must be a grand thing,” she said, “to be a man, Mr. 
Fulton.” 

And she stopped again. 

“I’d sooner,” she said — the music was unlocking her tongue 
now — “you was a man an’ a great man an’ wrote books, 
Mr. Fulton, then . . . than anythin’. I’d die,” Miss McGee 
said, and suddenly her voice was passionate, “if ye could be 
great. I’d — I’d do . . . anythin’.” 

They went up the stairs silently together. When they reached 
the first landing they stopped at Miss McGee’s door and she 
held out her hand — she didn’t invite him in. “Good night,” 
she said, “an’ thank ye. I’ll never forget ut.” 

She went in and closed the door. 


CHAPTER XIX 

A FTER the concert nothing at all happened. It was mere 
unadulterated dullness. The days passed for Robert, 
and Miss McGee too, in the rapid discordant kind of 
way that is characteristic of the New World, and perhaps of 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


125 

the modern world all over. There was a hustle to get through 
the days at all, and a feeling that nothing had been accom- 
plished when they came to an end. A most unsatisfactory way 
to live. 

It sometimes seemed to Robert as if he could hardly bear it 
much longer. He stood his life of drudgery far worse than 
Miss McGee stood hers for the simple reason that he had begun 
to drudge too late. The pleasantnesses of his early life stood 
between him and his butter-and-cheese existence till the Ar^wdel 
Market seemed frankly unbearable. He didn’t complain much 
out loud in actual words, but his whole bearing — his indiffer- 
ent expression, his slow movements, his lack of interest, his 
evidently lessening vitality — told the tale for him. The ex- 
pression of his eyes showed that he was discontented with life, 
that he rebelled against life — as it is: that he was either 
ready to burst into a flame about life, or give it up altogether. 

There is no denying that such a frame of mind as this is 
wicked. Robert Fulton, in feeling this, was disgraziato, as 
Samuel Butler and the Italians say. But can one blame him? 
It wasn’t the work he had to do he complained of. It wasn’t 
even the miserable drudgery of the work he was expected to do. 
It was the uselessness of it that made him despair. If he could 
have felt that he was accomplishing anything by standing in 
his white linen suit behind his hygienic glass-covered counter 
all day long, he would not have minded so much; he might 
even have been — contented: though not, perhaps, happy. But 
to stand there all day long, from eight in the morning till 
seven at night (and after that came clearing-up time) just 
attending to tiresome unreasonable women who nine times out 
of ten didn’t know what they wanted to buy — that was what 
was so unbearable. Had Robert felt that be was selling good 
honest food to people who needed nourishment, he could have 
comforted himself by the feeling that he was at least useful — he 
wouldn’t have grudged then the necessary drudgery of the 
work. But he couldn’t — or didn’t — feel this because of the at- 
mosphere of the store he worked in. The Anmdel Market 
was a big palatial sort of place, the “best” food store in the 
city, all white marble and glass and tiles and linen suits: 
and Robert and his fellow-salesmen and the young lady cashiers, 
perched up aloft like so many cherubs in plaid skirts and 
“lingerie” waists, were just pawns in the hands of financiers 
“playing the game” and making money out of them. Robert 
realized this. That was the reason for his so often feeling 
that he could not bear it one moment longer. 


126 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


What made him bear it ? Dire necessity. He had by his own 
foolishness — a more emphatic thing than mere folly — reduced 
himself to this plight, and there was no way out of it. How 
could he save anything to buy himself out of it on his weekly pit- 
tance? Had he time to do anything else, to make money on 
some side-issue? And even if he had had time what could 
he offer that would be accepted in the Commercial Market? He 
knew well enough in the real place that anything he could write 
would be unsaleable in the New World — and possibly in the Old 
one too. He had wares — but they were unsaleable wares. The 
world had taught him that. Well, then, there was nothing for 
it but to hang on to the cheese-and-butter counter and make 
a bare living wage out of it. When that did get unbearable — 
quite . . . there was always a way out of it. And yet Robert 
Fulton wasn’t a person who would commit suicide. 

It was a long weary day. There was nothing on earth to 
amuse him. His fellow-salesmen — good fellows enough — had 
nothing in common with him. He was civil to them all, they 
didn’t dislike him : but there was nothing between them. They 
had no links to hold them together. And the young lady 
cashiers, with their waved hairs and their shrill voices — he had 
nothing in common with them. He felt sorry for them, sorrier 
perhaps than they deserved he should be; but when he had 
wrapped the customers’ money in the bill and put the packet in 
the box, when he had set the box in the rack and touched the 
button and set the whole thing rolling unexpectedly up-hill to 
the young lady cashier, and seen her receive the box and set 
it on its homeward way again his connection with the plaid 
skirt and the wash-waist was at an end. He never spoke to 
these things, or really knew what was inside them. 

The coming of a man into the store was a treat. A man 
usually knew what he wanted and was willing to pay the 
price for it. You wrapped the thing up and he took it away — 
and when he got home his wife said “My dear, you shouldn’t 
have paid that ah-ful price for it!” In Robert’s opinion the 
first thing women had to learn (to prove their equality with 
men) was how to shop. He held the most determined opinions 
on this; his faith indeed in women had first been broken down 
when he came into intimate shopping-relations with them. He 
had thought of them before he became a butter-and-cheese 
salesman as faintly possessing all sorts of virtues, shopping 
virtues amongst them: and when, as a salesman, he found 
that they didn’t possess shopping virtues at all but quite the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


127 

reverse, his opinion of the sex, and his views on “Woman,” 
underwent a corresponding change. “When women know how 
to shop,” Robert might have said to anyone if he had had 
anyone to say it to, “I will vote for their vote. But not before.” 
He held embittered views on this subject. All that can be 
said in his excuse is that he had had his trials, and that trials 
lead first to embitterment before they point the way to resig- 
nation. 

The break in the day was lunch. It was a blessed time. All 
morning long Robert’s eyes sought the clock that dominated 
the store. “Two hours from lunch now,” he would say. Then 
“just an hour now — half an hour — twenty — ten — five — min- 
utes.” When noon came he heaved one deep sigh, doffed his 
linen suit and — fled. 

There was no special place to fly to. He fled merely round 
the corner to the Great North-Eastern Lunch Counter of the 
Dominion. It had not many attractions, this Great North- 
Eastern Counter. Its chief attraction was that it was not the 
store. It was a big bare place, filled with endless chairs, each 
with its own broad wooden arm which served as a table when 
the lunch was brought. Robert had not money to have a nice 
lunch. He merely had a cup of cocoa and some toast; but it 
was quiet, comparatively; he could sit in the window and watch 
what was going on; he could read, if he felt inclined, a little 
bit of the book he always carried in his pocket; and above all, 
and chiefest treat of all, there were no lady-customers to serve. 
There were no ladies, or women either, in the Great North- 
Eastern Lunch Counter of the Dominion, except the little 
waitresses who hurried to and fro and carried the Quick Lunches 
to the Quick Customers and then carried back the empty 
dishes to the Quick Dish-washers. They were poor under- 
grown, underfed little kinds of things, with the usual waved 
hair and pat of powder on the cheek — “They too are pawns,” 
Robert would say to himself bitterly, “they are slaves — just 
like me.” And now and then he would bestow an ill-to-be- 
spared five cent piece on the little waitress who looked after 
him. She found it hard to live, and anyone that eased her path 
got her attention. She kept the chair in the window for him 
whenever she could. 

As the winter went on Robert read less and less in the book 
he carried about in his pocket. He felt tireder and tireder as 
the weather grew colder, and less and less inclined to lose 
himself in a book; for it takes vitality to be able to lose your- 


128 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


self in anything, and Robert had no vitality to spare. In- 
stead, he merely used to sit in the window of the Lunch Room, 
and look out at the people passing to and fro on the sidewalk 
(the North-Eastern Lunch Counter was situated on St. Hubert’s 
Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of Regalia which runs almost 
from one end of the city to the other) , and watch the unceasing 
traffic in the street. There were the electric cars making their 
way down the middle of the street with an unending clang. 
There were sleighs innumerable gliding about to the festive 
little accompaniment of their bells. He liked to watch the 
sleigh-drivers, who looked like bears in their great ’coon coats; 
and it amused him to watch the occupants of the sleighs wrapped 
up in their furs, with sleigh robes — of buffalo or bear — behind 
them over the back of the sleigh and more robes over their 
knees and tucked in about their legs. It was cold — cold — cold. 
The winter of 1917-1918 came early and stayed late. By the 
middle of November Regalia was already deep in snow, with 
the sort of clear and frosty air that usually waits till January 
to come; and through the clearness there came a sort of dagger 
of cold that plunged to the very heart. Robert had no fur coat, 
he could never take a sleigh. He could only sit at the window 
of his cheap restaurant, eating his cheap lunch and looking at 
the sleighs pealing by . . . and watching the great leviathans 
of motor cars that came rolling through the traffic to the ground- 
bass of their tooting motor-horns. 

It all looked very wealthy and easy and luxurious. Inside 
the cars — the ly-mousines, as Miss McGee called them — there 
were women wrapped up, protected from the cold in every pos- 
sible way. As such cars went rolling by Robert could sometimes 
distinguish the vase of flowers that had its place opposite the 
occupant of the car — violets at a dollar a bunch, such as Mrs. 
Glassridge had taken from the cut-glass vase to pin in Katie 
McGee’s coat, or roses at a couple of dollars each. And, at that 
sight, something of the anarchist would rise up in Robert Ful- 
ton; a desire would seize him to go out and break through the 
window of the ly-mousine and seize the flowers and throw them 
in the snow and trample on them, and take the occupant out 
and . . . 

It was totally unlike Robert Fulton to feel that way. He 
was the most peaceful of creatures. He wished no one any 
harm. But to see wealth flaunted before your eyes, when 
you are uncomfortable all day long — it is hard. And it was 
only occasionally, on his better days, that Robert could permit 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


129 

his sense of the ridiculous, a sort of gaiete de malheur to rise 
up through his discomfort — and comfort him. “Perhaps Mrs. 
Glassridge is inside that!” he would say on these better days 
when a car with Dollars written on it would go rolling by. And 
when he said that — some of Miss McGee’s tales of the mag- 
nificance of the Glassridge household would come into his 
mind — a sense of the ludicrousness of the world as it is would 
fill his soul — and he would feel better. Perhaps a sense of 
the ridiculous, or humor as we call it, is the best gift civiliza- 
tion has offered us yet: or did God send humor to com- 
pensate us for other gifts that civilization has forced on us? 
At any rate whenever Robert thought of Mrs. Glassridge and 
her absurd menage, something seemed to break in him, and 
he felt amused. And then the tenseness of life seemed loosened 
for the moment; the whole thing seemed ridiculous. 

After lunch there was nothing to do but to go for a turn. 
Robert would leave the restaurant and stroll up the first turning 
out of the Boulevard and turn his eyes to Regalia’s hill. He 
had not much time, just enough to see that God’s world is 
beautiful; perhaps, in one of the tree-bordered side-streets, he 
would catch sight of a big gray squirrel, down on the ground, 
quite at home here within hearing of the electric-cars: and 
he would stand to watch it as it skimmed fearlessly along the 
side-walk, or sat up holding some little delicacy it had found 
tight between its tiny fore-paws. It was a pretty thing. Robert 
would stand contentedly, while it nibbled and kept a bright 
brown eye on him. It was not frightened. It was fat and 
evidently well -used; yet at Robert’s slightest movement to come 
near, it would turn, stand suspended, as it were, on its hind 
legs for a second, and then before Robert could count three 
it would be high amongst the branches, looking down on him; 
and if he stood a moment longer watching, he would see it 
leaping from one bare branch to another — holding on by the 
lightest twig, springing, leaving the waving twig behind it. 
How sure-footed — alert — dexterous it was ! What a miracle of 
minute strength and muscular grace . . . 

It seemed a shame to leave the squirrel and go back to the 
Arwmiel Market for an afternoon that was only a morning 
longer-drawn out. Nothing was going to happen — nothing 
could happen — till seven o’clock but more serving out of but- 
ter and honey and cheese and eggs to more customers. There 
were interminable hours to be worn through. How Robert 
hated those prosperous women who came and shopped ! How he 


130 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


detested the dipped intonations of their Canadian voices. He 
loathed their shrillness and their arrogance and their clumsiness 
of movement (it had taken his labor in the store to show him 
that women are more clumsy in their movements than men). 
He hated them from head to foot, and he felt certain that 
if he could see inside them he would hate them more. “How 
could St. Anthony be tempted by a woman?” he would ask 
himself as he was wrapping up a pound of butter. “What did 
he see in her? JIadn’t he any sense?” It seemed to him in- 
credible that any of these creatures that came flouncing and 
rustling into the store could ever be fascinating to any man. 
They weren’t real enough to him to enable him to realize that 
a woman buying butter and the same woman in the arms of 
the man she loves are two different women. “Bah!” he would 
say to himself — just as he had said it the evening when he 
lifted Miss McGee’s blind and looked into the snowy night, 
“I hate women. Take them away ...” 

Going home at nights in the cold clear darkness he felt 
sometimes as if he must give it up. “If it led anywhere,” 
he would keep on saying to himself. But the thought of going 
on like this for ever and ever till he passed out of it into — 
what! . . . seemed to him something that he couldn’t possibly 
face. He was miserable — wretched — with everything that makes 
life worth living knocked right out of him. And worse even than 
the acuteness of these unbearable feelings — he was bored. He 
was horribly bored. He was bored stiff: and boredom reduces 
the vitality. It makes the temperature sub-normal. It checks 
the flow of the blood, it lowers the pulse-rate — it takes the light 
out of the eye and the springiness out of the foot. It in- 
hibits desire: it is a microbe that searches through and through 
the system — and ravages it. Robert Fulton, in his work in the 
store had a physical feeling sometimes as if someone were 
working through his chest with a gimlet and coming out with 
the point at the other side of him. He suddenly realized the 
meaning of “being bored.” The etymology came home, like a 
curse, to roost. Great sorrow can be borne — somehow. Despair 
must be faced. But boredom, tedious purposeless boredom, day 
after day, starting nowhere and leading to no kingdom come — 
who can be^expected to bear such a thing as that? No possible 
idea underlies boredom. And ideas are what enable us to 
face the unhappinesses of our lives. 

As Robert Fulton came back to Penelope’s Buildings in 
the last winter days of 1917, he felt that this world is not a 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


131 

fit place to live in. As he slithered along in his old rubbers, 
not even Miss McGee after the “matineeh” with Mrs. Glass- 
ridge felt more revolutionary than he. He felt anarchistic and 
Bolshevist — which was quite foreign to his nature. Had there 
been anything to join he would have joined it. He envied 
the men at the War. The only thing that would have given 
him unmixed satisfaction would have been to see the Directors 
of the Arwwdel Meat, Grocery, Fruit, Vegetable and Dairy 
Produce Market (so it was described in the circulars punctually 
sent round to the Shareholders) dragged in the snow — and left 
there to freeze . . . 

He was ashamed of this state of mind, and yet he hadn’t 
the strength to rise above it. He went on from one wretched 
day to another — and struggled to the next. As he was walking 
to his business or home again he never raised his eyes to the 
beautiful skies of winter with their great snow-laden clouds 
that showed their silver lining to the seeing eye whenever a 
shaft of light struck across them. What Robert saw was black- 
ness. He walked along, like Mr. Muckrake, with his eyes 
glued to the frozen ground. It is perhaps not difficult to under- 
stand that Robert Fulton, in this state of mind, was not a 
cheerful companion. 

He went down to Miss McGee’s most evenings, chiefly because 
he had nowhere else to go. Once there, he would take his seat 
by the fire and wait silently till the meal was ready, and then, 
turning his chair to the table, he would sit and eat his meal, 
replying certainly to any remark Miss McGee might offer, but 
originating nothing of his own. He didn’t mean to be dis- 
agreeable. He assuredly didn’t want to be disagreeable; but 
somehow, whenever he did think of something to say, he was 
unable to say it. Something inhibited his speech. The thing 
didn’t seem worth saying, or he didn’t feel like saying it when 
it came to the point of placing the words on his tongue, or 
although he might wish to say it — he couldn’t. Such a mood 
as that comes back on the possessor of the mood. No one can 
feel a sick disgust at the world without feeling a sick disgust 
at himself too. No one can hate life without hating himself. 
No one can separate himself — we are all a part of everything 
else: and Robert felt all this. He did hate himself as well as 
everything else. He was thoroughly and blackly miserable. 

Although Robert mainly went down to Miss McGee’s because 
he had nowhere else to go, there was another and a pleasanter 
reason for his going. He went down night after night (the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


132 

meals had been brought to a business basis, and Robert paid for 
what he ate) because at Miss McGee’s there was a faint flavor 
of home. For a long while past there has been a great deal 
said against home. Probably we had all had too much of it. 
But go away from home and stay away; be barred outside 
of home: have no entrance to any home at all — and see how 
you feel. Robert Fulton in his better moods was glad and 
thankful to have Miss McGee’s poor little apartment to go 
down to in the evenings just because it had a faint flavor 
of home. He liked to go, not so much for the meal which 
Miss McGee prepared for him (though he liked that too) as 
because she liked him to come, because she wanted to give 
him her best and present him with the warmest seat by the 
fire; because he saw, in a semi-conscious and sub-conscious sort 
of way that it meant a great deal for her to have him there 
beside her. It is the feeling of being wanted that makes home; 
and it is the reverse of this feeling that makes the other thing. 
Robert Fulton, silent and irresponsive as he was across Miss 
McGee’s little oblong table, was yet grateful to Miss McGee 
for the atmosphere which she created. It was when he walked 
into her poor little room that he knew — and only then did he 
know it — a certain pause in his wretched misfit of a life. He 
was not happy or even contented as he sat, half-listening to 
Miss McGee and half away in some melancholy reverie; but 
he was, for the moment, at rest. He had a feeling of res- 
pite. He could stop, sit quiet, think about nothing at all — 
rest. 

Miss McGee was so glad to see him that she didn’t mind 
whether he was disagreeable or not. She was past the stage 
of criticizing; she had got to the place where she took Robert 
for granted — as women do take men when they care for them: 
she swallowed Robert Fulton whole, regarded him lovingly 
with eyes that saw no faults — in a truly Christian way. 

When conversation languished between them, she regarded it 
as her fault. “Sure,” she said to herself, “I’m no companion 
fer such as him. He’s thinkin’, bless um.” And with that ex- 
traordinary mixture of feelings which women shower on men 
when they begin to love them, Miss McGee regarded Robert 
at once as a totally incapable child to be led and thought for 
and taken care of, and as a grand great thinker in whose foot- 
prints she was not worthy to tread. She looked up to him 
and down at him at one and the same time. “He’s thinkin’,” 
she said to herself on the nights when Robert’s disagreeable- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


133 

ness was most to the fore. “He’s got the great grand book in 
his moind an’ he’s nursin’ ut, God bless um.” And she sat op- 
posite him at the little oblong table, perfectly contented to be 
dull. If he didn’t care to talk— well then, all right. If he 
wished to drop an observation — all the better. It was sufficient 
happiness for Miss McGee to have him there beside her, and 
while he was nursing, not any great grand book at all but 
his disappointment with the world and his hatred of life, she 
was turning over in her mind projects like this. “I wonder, 
would he let me fix his sta’ackens fer um, the bo’oy! Would 
I ast um — or would I wait till he feels happier in his 
moind ...” 

Years seemed to be blotted out in Miss McGee’s soul as 
she sat watching Robert. She loved him like an aunt, like 
' a wife, like a mother, like a sister — anyway, so that she might 
have him there close beside her, eating the meal she had 
prepared for him, and growing rested by her fireside. In 
the late days of 1917 Miss McGee was very happy. She had 
never been happier in her life than now when Robert came 
tossed into her fireside as a bit of wreckage comes tossed on to 
the mainland by the furious waves. 

Miss McGee made a far better business of life than Robert 
did. She didn’t question things. She just took what came, and 
except in acute moments when she wished she were dead, she 
didn’t complain — even to herself. As to boredom, she was 
immune from it. She had been inoculated with the virus so 
early in life that she could nurse a case of the most malignant 
boredom and not even fear infection. Miss McGee always 
had had a hard time, and she reaped the benefits of it. While 
Robert harked back to the better days he had known — and bit- 
terly regretted them, Miss McGee hadn’t any better days to hark 
back to (except perhaps the Tully Bardwell days, and they 
hadn’t been perfect) ; therefore she took life as she found it, a 
pretty poor thing, and made the best of it: and you couldn’t 
contrast Robert with his divine discontents and Miss McGee 
unaware even of the existence of such things without feeling 
that there is a good deal to be said for throwing a puppy into 
the water and letting him see if he can swim. Miss McGee 
had been chucked into life at the tenderest age and she knew 
the worst life can do by you. And consequently the gaiete 
de malheur which only at rare intervals could rise up and 
make itself felt in Robert was more or less a habitual state 
with Miss McGee. The tiniest things pleased and amused 


i34 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


her. A pat of sweet butter made her happy for a day. While 
Robert sat inwardly bemoaning his fate, Miss McGee was 
busy planning how she might spend her daily dollar and a 
half so that Robert might get the utmost benefit out of it. 
Through Robert Fulton Miss McGee had finally managed to 
slip out of herself — into the world, which is probably the first 
step on the road to heaven; while Robert, who never dreamed 
of the possibility of slipping out of himself through Miss Mc- 
Gee, shut himself tight up inside himself, closed every window 
in his soul, drew down the blinds — and sat silent and ir- 
responsive. He was very unhappy. 

There were times, however, when Miss McGee could lift 
Robert for a few moments right out of his despondency into 
a rational view of life; and when she did this it was usually 
by what he considered her entire unreasonableness. One 
evening, for instance, she began, out of a blue sky, to praise 
Mrs. Savourin. Now, one thing Robert had got into his 
head after some preliminary difficulty, and that was that the 
Janitress of Penelope’s Buildings was anathema to Miss McGee. 
He didn’t know why this was, and he didn’t want to know. 
If he had been pressed for a definition, he would probably 
have answered, “Some silliness.” But the fact he did know; 
and, knowing it, he kept off the subject of Mrs. Savourin 
altogether, knowing that it could only lead to trouble. When 
therefore he heard Miss McGee begin to open up in favor 
of Mrs. Savourin, nay, to laud her up to heaven as a foine good 
big-hear’rted woman, he came out of his abstraction with a 
jump. He drew up the blinds and opened the windows of his 
soul and sat looking out. 

“I thought you didn’t like her,” said he abruptly. 

Miss McGee took no notice of the remark. 

“I wish ye’d been on the stair-head today, Mr. Fulton,” said 
she, “when that young dope-man come back here fer to fetch 
his things.” 

She paused. 

“Seems,” she continued after a bit, “he’s too young to punish 
someway. So the judge told urn to git back home an’ behave 
umself.” 

“A first offender,” said Robert. 

“I s’pose,” said Miss McGee. 

She considered. 

“Sure, listen here,” she went on after a pause. “That young 
fella there come on here fer his things an’ Mrs. Savourin come 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


135 

up the stair with um to let um in the flat. An’ the toirae they 
was cornin’ up she ta’alked. I wisht you could ’a’ heard her.” 

Miss McGee paused once more. 

“ ‘Young bo’oy,’ says she, ‘have ye a mother?’ ‘Sure thing/ 
says he, ‘I have a mother.’ ‘How will ye ruin yerself then,’ says 
Mrs. Savourin to him, ‘you with a mother, gittin’ shut in a 
prison an’ losin’ the loight of the day ! Can ye not be thinkin’ of 
yer mother, young bo’oy, an’ she waitin’ an’ watchin’ at 
home . . . ” 

“My, she spoke elegant a’alroight,” Miss McGee said after 
a pause to let the words of elegance soak in — during which 
pause Robert said nothing. “Say, ’twas great to hear her, I tell 
you.” And after another moment she went on. “Ah, ’tis good 
we all have in us, Mr. Fulton, eh, an’ Mrs Savourin there 
has the good loike the rest of us. We’ve no ca’all to be har’rd 
on one another. God save us, we’re all sinners!”# 

She sighed. 

It did not strike Robert that Mrs. Savourin (as reported) 
had said anything very original or very remarkable. He listened 
unmoved to the further recital of what she had said. It seemed 
to him merely a repetition of the young man having or having 
had a mother — which seemed self-evident : for if he hadn’t had a 
mother, how could he have been there ? But to Miss McGee the 
fact of the young man having a mother was enough. She had 
tears in her eyes as she thought of it. Mrs. Savourin (who 
had spoken, it appeared, to the young man at the stair-head 
with an ever-increasing Penelopian audience) had hit the nail 
plumb on the head. There was a universal revulsion of feel- 
ing in her favor. “She ain’t bad, God bless her,” said the 
Penelopians (female made He them) to one another. “Did ye 
hear the way she got ut awf on that young bo’oy, eh? Sure, 
’twas great!” 

Miss McGee was of the opinion of the other Penelopians. All 
her feelings against Mrs. Savourin were swept away — dead and 
fouried. There was no chance of a resurrection of Miss McGee’s 
former feelings until the next time she caught Mrs. Savourin 
trying to entangle Robert in a conversation. Till then she was 
a Saint. 

Robert sat and listened. It seemed to him that women are 
odd, contradictory, not-to-be-laid-hold-of creatures. He felt in- 
creasingly, as Miss McGee went on, that it would be impos- 
sible for any man to say what wind of doctrine would blow them 
about next, or in what direction it would blow them. Having 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


136 

got it into his head that Miss McGee hated Mrs. Savourin for 
life, it was thoroughly disconcerting to his reasoning faculty 
to hear her say that the Janitress had a foine motherly hear’rt. 
The young man, it appeared, had shown himself moved. He 
had been drawn on to talk of his mother — also, according to 
Miss McGee, “a great big-hear’rted woman, God bless her.” 
The simple name of “mother” had broken down every former 
assurance of the dope-man’s guilt and every equal certainty of 
the Janitress’s impropriety. The unknown mother had drawn 
all the female Penelopians into a partnership of one. As they 
watched the young man going into the flat to fetch his “things” 
and coming out of it again with the “things” under his arm, 
they had felt their hearts big with emotion. He was no longer 
a criminal to them, he was only a son. As Miss McGee told 
about it, tears came into her voice. “God have mer’rcy upon us 
all, Mr. Fulton,” said she, “how do we know how much they 
was needin’ the mooney, the poor souls? They moight ’a’ been 
star’rvin’ there an’ us not knowin’, eh. It’s not findin’ fault 
we should be anyway,” she went on, “it’s lookin’ after God’s 
creatures.” She sighed deeply. “Sure, we’re all the sinners,” 
she said once more. 

Robert gave it up. He thought of Miss McGee as she had 
been on the night of the visit of the “Pollis,” the vision of 
her tear-stained face came over him, he remembered her cling- 
ing to his hand, the misery, the general dampness of the at- 
mosphere, her inconsolableness at the diss- grace — and here she 
was, almost equally overwhelmed ... on the other side. 

“The poor bo’oy,” she kept saying, “an’ his mother far away 
sorrowin’ and prayin’ an’ him next door to the prison. . . .” 

She sat shaking her head, the big tears of sympathy in her 
eyes. 

“He had the good face too, the bo’oy,” said she, “he’ll 
have been misled, bless um.” 

Yes, women are queer incomprehensible creatures. They are 
not-to-be-laid-hold-of things. Still, as Robert looked across at 
Miss McGee’s tearful eyes, he did not feel the hatred he felt 
for the equally queer and incomprehensible things who came 
and shopped at his store. He sat eyeing Miss McGee — and 
suddenly the tenseness inside him seemed to give. He felt 
loose — relaxed, suddenly and unexpectedly contented and 
amused. He burst into a fit of laughter. 

“What’s the matter, eh?” said Miss McGee. The tears 
dried up in her eyes. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


137 

She looked across the table at him and she thought to her- 
self, “Say, my, ef men ain’t the queer things . . . !” 

And then, as Robert continued to laugh, after a minute she 
laughed too . . . but not the same kind of laugh as Robert’s. 

“Miss McGee,” said Robert, getting up — his voice was quite 
weak from laughter, “I must go.” 

“Must ye?” said Miss McGee. She felt regretful, as she 
always did, when he had to go. 

“Yes,” said Robert, “I must go. With the laugh had come 
inexplicably the impulse to go up-stairs and write. It was as if 
the laugh had been a key turned in the door of something, 
and as if the door had flown open at the turn. 

“I must go,” he said. “I’ve got to work a bit.” He stood 
.looking down at Miss McGee, and suddenly he felt very fond 
of her. “It’s been a nice evening this,” he said. “Thank you. 
I feel ever so much better. Good night.” 

And he held out his hand. 

“Do ye now?” said Miss McGee. The news that he felt 
better almost made up for losing him an hour earlier than 
she had expected. “Well, come again,” she said — and she put 
her hand in his. 

As he went upstairs that night he felt better than he had 
felt for a long time past. “Queer,” he said to himself as he 
fitted his key into the key-hole of his door, “aren’t they 
queer!” — and, still laughing a little, he sat down at his table 
to write. It was bitterly cold, but he hardly felt it. The laugh 
had warmed him and set his blood flowing ... he felt in- 
terested in being alive again. 

But Miss McGee, as soon as she was left alone, turned 
grave. “Sure now, that bo’oy’s onhappy,” she said to herself. 
“I wonder now, has he a mother!” Her thoughts played 
about him as she made ready for bed. “Sure, they’re the 
queer things, men, a’alroight,” she said to herself. She felt no 
inclination to smile. 


CHAPTER XX 

C HRISTMAS was to Miss McGee the time of the year. She 
looked forward to it as a child looks forward to a toy; 
and she looked upward to it as a Christian looks up to 
a rite. She loved Christmas — many of the happiest moments 
of her life were connected with Christmases past and gone; 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


138 

and she adored and revered Christmas as the birthday of her 
Lord. These two feelings made Christmas to her a sweetly 
sacred thing; and, all through the year, whenever the thought 
of the Christmas Eve midnight service, to which she always 
went, came into her mind — her eyes filled with tears. Miss 
McGee was emotional, but all her feelings did not go out in 
emotion. To prove her joy in Christmas she would have 
done any practical thing : and no hardship would have been too 
great to go through to reach St. Patrick’s on the night before 
Christmas Day. 

Often as she was walking to her work through too-hot sun- 
shine or too-cold wind, the vision of the brightly-lighted church 
would come before her eyes. She would see the child in the 
manger with the kneeling figure beside it; the figure of the 
old priest, Father O’Rourke (whom she loved and respected) 
would rise before her eyes . . . and she would see the acolytes 
coming slowly after the old priest, down the church, scattering 
as they went the thick intense perfume of the incense ; she would 
see the faint blue smoke go up out of the censers; and she 
would hear the voices — like the voices of angels — coming from 
up above. And, when this happened, all the common and un- 
clean things of daily life were blotted out from before Miss 
McGee’s eyes, and it seemed to her as if she were alone with 
God. St. Patrick’s represented to Miss McGee — home. When 
she went in through the great portals of the church she felt 
as if she were coming to rest in dear arms, to be comforted, 
consoled for the sorrows of life, as if she were about to re- 
ceive promises of something to come, so great and so glorious 
that all present griefs paled before it as a tiny rushlight 
pales before the sun. Her religion was to Miss McGee some- 
thing real, something not dimly connected with life but 
something that was knitted into life itself. She loved her 
religion so well that she could sometimes jest with it. She 
would use the name of God, not in vain, but as if He were 
a beloved friend. And when she did this there was something 
about Miss McGee that was infinitely young. She seemed tender 
and fresh in spite of her whitened hair and her lined brow. 
Out of her large eyes there seemed to look an eternal child; 
and on to her ugly mouth there would come a smile that made 
it beautiful. “Ye little black divil,” as she said of herself, 
“what roight have you to be aloive!” And then she would say, 
“Sure, I’m a joke of God’s . . — and laugh as a child laughs 
when it makes fun of its mother. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


139 

It was as they approached Christmas Day that a difference — a 
new one — made itself felt between Robert and Miss McGee. 
It was this time, perhaps, more a difference of what we call 
“class” than anything else. Robert viewed Christmas as the 
“educated” mostly do. He thought it a bore, a tiresome thing, 
a thing to be passed over lightly as a birthday is passed over 
when its possessor is no longer young. He had always viewed 
Christmas that way without thinking much about it one way 
or the other; and now that the Arwwdel Market expected its 
salesman to stay till ten all the nights of the Christmas week 
(without compensation) his views on -the Feast grew clearer 
and more acutely outlined. “Christmas,” he said to Miss Mc- 
Gee at her first mention of the day, “what’s Christmas to me? 
I have to stay at the store till ten o’clock.” 

And the subject was dropped. 

Miss McGee regretted this, but she didn’t see her way to 
alter it. Her view of Christmas was the poor view. Christmas 
is the poor man’s treat just as the Christian religion is the 
poor man’s (and the poor woman’s) religion. Miss McGee 
thought of the birthday of Christ as a comforting thing, as a 
breathing-space in the toil of the year, as a religious festival 
and also as the occasion to go and “blow” all the money you 
have. Her point of view was the eminently religious point 
of view; it was the point of view of the alabaster box: and 
Robert’s wasn’t. He went on looking at our Lord’s birthday 
as he always had done — but rather more so. He regarded his 
having to stay at the Arwndel Meat and Dairy Produce Market 
until ten o’clock at night without a penny’s compensation as an 
outrage. If by any means he could have called down a piece 
of the Divine Fire and set it against the dairy counter — he 
would have done so; not being able to do this, he put Christmas 
out of his mind as far as he could and refused to say one 
word about it. 

Miss McGee therefore found herself as lonely as she usually 
was at Christmas-time. Mrs. Garry each year sent an invita- 
tion to let bygones be bygones and for Katie to come and eat 
hot turkey as of old; but Miss McGee sturdily refused. “I 
ain’t a beggar,” she went on saying, “an’ I ain't cornin’, an’ 
you kin tell yer mother so, Rose Garry.” What Rose reported 
to Mrs. Garry is not known. The plate of cold turkey rose 
up before Miss McGee more distinctly at Christmas-time than 
at any other season of the year. 

This year, as she sat sewing at her customers’ houses, her 


140 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


mind was full of a plan which she wanted to carry out. “He’s 
nowhere to go, I guess,” she said to herself, “an’ sure thing 
he’ll be lonesome, the bo’oy. Why wouldn’t we have a little 
bit of Christmas to ourselves, eh? We’ll keep the holiday.” 

The difficulty was that for the past two years Miss McGee 
had invited Cassie Healy down from her attic to share the 
feast. (It was a feast, for Mrs. Barclay always came out 
strong at Christmas-time.) “The poor article,” as Miss McGee 
said of Miss Healy. “She ain’t got nothin’ an’ nobody cares. 
I want to have her come an’ play in my yar’rd.” Miss Healy 
had come every time she was asked, and now the difficulty in 
Miss McGee’s mind was that Cassie was not quite “good 
enough” for Robert. She debated the point a good deal in 
her mind; and she finally came to the conclusion that it had 
to be. Robert must just put up with it. “I ain’t goin’ to 
let the article be lonesome all by her lone,” Miss McGee said 
to herself, “not on Christmas-noight, an’ that’s one sure thing. 
Ef she does stick her knoife in her mouth an’ she ain’t got no 
par’rty manners . . . well, she ain’t, an’ that’s all about ut.” 

“Ye’ll not moind Miss Healy bein’ there,” she said to Robert 
by way of preparing him for his fellow-guest’s deficiencies. 
“She’s a bit awf — but ye’ll not moind ” Robert said he 
wouldn’t, and the Christmas party being thus settled, nothing 
remained to be fixed but the details in the hostess’s mind. 

Up to Christmas Eve, and even on Christmas Eve, Miss Mc- 
Gee had work. This was unusual; for at the Christmas time 
of year Miss McGee was apt to be “laid awf,” as she said, with 
a consequent shortage of money. But this year a customer 
had wanted her to “fix over a lot of stuff”; and Miss McGee 
had thus been able to earn her dollar and a half a day all 
through December, up to Christmas Eve itself. It was imme- 
diately after lunch on the 24th that Miss McGee left this lady’s 
flat with a full day’s pay in her wrist-bag purse. She had only 
worked for half the day; but she had put the last stitch in and 
had even packed the lady’s trunk (she was leaving for the 
South that night) : and the lady, in what to Miss McGee was 
an astonishing outburst of generosity, had insisted on paying 
for the whole day’s work. Miss McGee had demurred — she 
was punctiliously and even rather foolishly honest; but the lady 
had insisted. “Of course!’ * she kept saying — and at last, 
nothing loth, Miss McGee had accepted the money. 

It had been a pleasant three weeks. Miss McGee was 
sorry it was over. The lady was a new customer, to whom 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


141 

Miss McGee had been recommended by someone, and this 
was the first seance of sewing Katie had ever held in her 
apartment. It was a “real” apartment, a place furnace-heated 
by a Janitor, with a big bath-room, and electric light. If 
the lady had been other than she actually was Miss McGee 
might have felt a sense of envy — a sort of “why should she 
have it all!” as she was accustomed to feel at Culross. But it 
was impossible to feel that way about this customer — though 
Miss McGee would have found it difficult to tell you why. 
Miss Eileen Martyn — for that was her name — was in fact 
more or less of a mystery to Miss McGee. She wasn’t, in 
the strict sense, a lady at all. She worked for her bread, and 
therefore she was a “Business Woman.” But — here was the 
problem — she seemed, like Robert, to have had an elegant edu- 
cation. The way she made her living was by means of this 
elegant education — she wrote. And writing, in the eyes of 
Miss McGee, was in itself a superior proceeding, appertaining 
to elegance, and making the individual who plied such a trade, 
not a Business Woman nor a lady, but something nameless be- 
tween the two. Miss McGee sometimes wondered if here, in 
the Frejus Mansions she had struck “Woman.” Robert’s re- 
marks about “Woman” molding the Dominion came more than 
once to her mind as she listened to the lady’s calm equable ac- 
cent — not unlike Robert’s own — holding forth on some totally 
unfeminine question. For, here was another odd thing, this cus- 
tomer talked about all sorts of things that Miss McGee’s 
other customers never came near. She was interested in politics, 
in what the municipality didn’t do for the town, in what it 
should do, in housing problems, in the life of the poor. 

Miss McGee, in conversation with Miss Martyn, varied be- 
tween respect and familiarity. Sometimes she thought of 
her as “Woman” — and then she was respectful; sometimes she 
thought of her merely as one who earns a living — and then she 
was familiar. But which ever way she spoke — and another odd 
thing was that the customer didn’t seem to care — she found her- 
self being more than usually communicative. To Miss McGee’s 
own profound astonishment she had caught herself sometimes 
during these three weeks talking of all sorts of things — of 
Tully — of Mrs. Morphy — of Dan and Maggie Chambers. Miss 
Martyn was immensely interested in all Miss McGee let fall. 
She encouraged her to speak by being a very first-class listener; 
everything seemed to be grist that came to her mill. She liked 
hearing about Penelope’s Buildings, and — unlike Robert — she 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


142 

quite took to the subject of Mitt, whose name, in an unguarded 
moment, Miss McGee had let fall. 

“It seems to me a pity you letjiim go,” Miss Martyn had said 
at the conclusion of the Mitt tale; “you’d far better have been 
married, Miss McGee.” 

She spoke in a perfectly business-like manner; but still, 
“Woman” as she evidently must be, she seemed to hold the 
usual opinion that woman is but man’s appendage. 

“Well,” Miss McGee had answered — and it was on this 
occasion that she showed the first-fruits of the seed Robert 
had allowed to fall upon her mind — “I moight be better as 
I am. Mitt was foine to look at sure, but he would’ve been 
an expinse a’alroight to keep.” 

There was about this remark none of the feverish heat that 
attended Miss McGee’s asseverations to Mrs. Barclay on the 
superiority of virginity. She spoke quietly— just as one speaks 
when one means things. 

After a pause Miss Martyn said, “Perhaps!” — also quietly, 
as if she, too, were assured of the truth of the observation. And 
it was “the Lady’s” prompt agreement with this point of view 
that led Miss McGee to the conclusion that she had “saw the 
wor’rld.” 

“Sure thing she’s no fool!” said Miss McGee to herself. 
Out loud she said, “There’s safety in the single loife.” 

The subject dropped. 

As Miss McGee came out of the Frejus Mansions and walked 
along the sidewalk she felt distinctly sorry that the Miss Martyn 
episode was over. She made her way to St. Hubert’s Boulevard 
where she had some shopping to put through, and as she went 
she turned things over in her mind. She guessed that the Lady’s 
interest in Penelope’s Buildings was not wholly disinterested. 
“Sure, she’ll be a choild among us taki'n’ notes,” Miss McGee 
(who had Scotch friends and who sometimes picked up their 
remarks incorrectly) said to herself. “She’s the choild a’al- 
roight, be-lieve me ” she further said, making her way along. 
She thought how sympathetic the Lady (for by this absurd name 
Miss McGee had already begun to represent Miss Martyn to 
herself) had been when she had been telling her things in 
her life-history. “Sure,” she said, “she’s welcome to all I 
kin tell her fer her books.” And she laughed a somewhat 
mirthless laugh as she thought how impossible it would be for 
anyone to make any book at all out of her life. “A little black 
divil loike me,” she thought, and she laughed rather mirthlessly 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


143 


again as she went further. The thought that she was useless 
as “copy” rather depressed her — she would have liked to be a 
heroine of romance: yet it also rather consoled her for what 
she felt had been indiscretions on her part. Miss Martyn 
had been kindly — excessively: as they had sat sewing together, 
Miss McGee had expanded. “Sure, I never told anyone so 
much before,” she had said to the Lady once. And the Lady, 
with a queer kind of laugh, had replied, “Oh, it’s safe with 
me.” She had dropped her bit of sewing, Miss McGee remem- 
bered, as she said that, and had gone back to her typewriter. 

Now that was over — for the time. Miss McGee hoped she 
might go back some day to the Lady. She had liked being 
in the little warm apartment, so simple and yet so charming — 
in its unexpectedness; for it was very unexpected to Miss Mc- 
Gee with the relics of travel the lady had scattered all about. 
She had traveled and it had had a good effect on her in spite 
of Robert’s opening to his book — ‘Whether travel is to be com- 
mended as a necessarily educative and enlightening influence 
is perhaps a debatable point.’ That fazed Miss McGee, as 
she said. Why was travel not good for everyone — Why? And 
yet she never dared to put the question point-blank to Robert 
in case he should reply in words of ten syllables, and she re- 
main more puzzled than ever. Well, anyway the time at the 
Frejus Mansions was at an end; there were no more of the 
simple good meals the Lady had so unexpectedly cooked . . . 
for the present. Miss McGee had appreciated the Lady’s 
kindliness and interest, she had enjoyed the peaceful friendliness 
of the days, the click of the lady’s typewriter in the adjoining 
room had been interesting — “it’s the queer loife sure fer a 
woman!” Miss McGee had said to herself. There had been 
scattered scraps of paper lying about all the time, and once 
Miss McGee had seen the scrap-basket, as she called it, posi- 
tively brimming: and that day the Lady had had tired eyes, 
and there had been just a suggestion of racked nerves some- 
times in her short answers. However, on the whole she had been 
delightful. Her occasional unreasoning moments of gayety had 
appealed to Miss McGee; and then her knowledge of the ways 
of the world and her lack of interest in them, her whole at- 
titude to Canada, half-respectful, half-patronizing — but not 
at all like Robert’s — and the aroma she constantly gave, off of 
being, well, different from anything Miss McGee had ever seen 
before — all this puzzled Miss McGee and intrigued her curi- 
osity. 


144 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Sure she’s neither flesh nor fowl,” Miss McGee would say 
to herself, watching this curious phenomenon leave her type- 
writer and make her way to the gas-stove in the tiny kitchen. 
“She’s the Business Girl that knows how to cook, an’ she’s 
the elegantest moind, an’ she don’t seem to care ...” 

This was the peculiarity of the Lady. She didn’t seem to 
care for any of Miss McGee’s fixed criterions of life. She 
seemed to regulate things by some mysterious unexplained rule 
of her own. All Miss McGee’s ways of thinking, her views 
of things in general and of women in particular (except that 
they should be married) she seemed to wave aside. Yes, she 
certainly must be “Woman,” and no mistake about it. 

As Miss McGee came wandering home from the Frejus Man- 
sions with the surprising unearned increment of a dollar and 
a half in her pocket she kept on being sorry that this odd 
pleasant little time with the Lady was at an end; she kept 
hoping that another such time might come very soon. The Lady 
was certainly interested in her clothes — but even that was in 
an odd way. She cared — and she didn’t care. Altogether she 
was a puzzle, and the name Miss McGee had struck out, “the 
Lady,” was a sign and symptom of the puzzlement. It meant 
that she wasn’t the Business Girl she seemed to be, and that, 
although she earned money and didn’t seem to be married — 
though her talk was often that of a much-married woman — she 
wasn’t the complete woman of leisure that Mrs. Glassridge was. 
She had a nice voice and a nice way of speaking and Miss 
McGee was sensitive to such things. Yes, “the Lady” was a 
suitable name. Miss McGee repeated it to herself as she walked 
along — and liked it. 

“Sure, I could have that ef I wanted ut,” she said suddenly to 
herself as some smart cakes of soap marked “Three a quarter — 
While they Last” in a cut-rate drug-store caught her eye. “I 
could have ’em an’ never miss the mooney!” It was an unusual 
thought. She fingered the dollar and a half as it lay in her 
wrist-bag. “I could have ’em sure,” she thought to herself. 
It gave her a sense of power. 

She didn’t buy the soap, however. She looked at it for some 
time and decided that there were other things she would like 
better. She turned into St. Hubert’s Boulevard and began 
looking at the shops there, all decked up for their Christmas 
sales. “The things is noice a’alroight,” Miss McGee said to 
herself now. She began to loiter and to look in at all the 
shop-windows. “It must be foine to be rich, eh!” she thought: 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


14 5 

and as she stood gazing in at the florist’s just round the corner 
from the cut-rate druggist’s, the dollar and a half suddenly 
seemed a pitiful thing. The sense of power decreased. “Them 
pale yella roses is foine!” Miss McGee thought to herself. “An’ 
say, see them voilets, eh!” She wondered what it would feel 
like to be Mrs. Glassridge going into that florist’s with Andrew 
at her back and saying casually and carelessly, “Send me twelve 
of them pink Killarneys. An’ say, make me up a bunch of 
mixed carnations — an’ weave in two of them Beauties there.” 
That would be a sense of power. Fancy being able to do 
things like that without a thought of the financial consequences ! 
Miss McGee stood outside the sheet of heavy plate-glass that 
divided her from the flowers and tried to think she was smell- 
ing the rich perfume of the Beauty roses. There they stood, 
magnificently plutocratic, over-long-stemmed, too big, taking up 
far more than their share of the room — arrogant overbearing 
flowers. But Miss McGee admired them whole-heartedly. “Sure, 
they’d look foine on me table tomorrow I” she said to herself 
— and she walked on further. 

After a bit — just half a block down — she went past the Great 
North-Eastern Lunch Counter of the Dominion, and she 
imagined Robert seated in the window looking out at the 
traffic and the eternal passers-by. All that she could know 
about Robert she knew. Everything that he did was interesting 
to her. In the evenings, so as to share his life as well as 
she could, she would question him as to where he went for his 
lunch and what he had — and who waited on him, and whether 
he ever spoke to her. Miss McGee had a conviction that 
nothing could uproot that no man can be happy for long with- 
out a young woman; and she often tried to trip Robert up into 
an admission — which if he had made it would have rendered her 
an unhappy woman. But so are woman made. As Robert 
said “Queer!” 

Presently Miss McGee came to Regalia’s Irish store — and 
there she stopped. In the window were collars of Irish crochet, 
and table centers worked round with Irish lace. There were 
fine linen handkerchiefs with initials embroidered in the 
comers, and there were tablecloths and sheets — and towels — 
bath-towels. Miss McGee gazed as intently as she had gazed at 
the roses a block before. “Sure,” she said to herself with her 
eyes on the big bath-towels, “it’s how many years I been wantin’ 
a towel loike that fer meself!” It was at Mrs. Glassridge’s 
that Miss McGee had formed this aristocratic aspiration. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


146 

“Sure,” she said, “it’s the grand big towel I’m wantin’ to 
cover me over when I git out of me . . . basin!” And at 
that she laughed: but it wasn’t a laugh with any special 
merriment in it — and she edged away from the shop. “Ire- 
land’s It anyway,” she said to herself, recalling the lace and 
the embroidery, and the beautiful fine linen. “Ireland’s It.” 
She kept turning to see the last of the Irish store, “It’s a grand 
country Ireland,” her heart said to her, “it kin beat the band 
every toime, thank God. An’ ef I don’t never have a big 
towel to wrap me around in before I die I guess I kin live 
without ut.” Her meditations were uprooted here by her 
bumping into a large gentleman who was hurrying along. 
“Par’rdon me!” she said. “He moight’ve said ‘Ye’re welcome’ !” 
she said to herself as she crossed the road to the ten-cent store 
opposite. “The manners is goin’ the down-hill road sinst I 
was young.” With this admission that she was getting old 
Miss McGee turned into the ten-cent store to buy some hand- 
kerchiefs for Mrs. Morphy to give to Dan. “Bless the bo’oy,” 
Mrs. Morphy had said. “He’s on the bum an’ I want to 
give um somethin’ to cheer um up. He’s been drunk these 
three weeks past an’ he ain’t got the cent fer Christmas. It’s 
koindness he’s needin’, God help um.” Miss McGee on the 
whole sympathized with these sentiments. “Well, I guess we 
kin stand um that,” she had said: and now, as she entered 
the stifling, packed, noisy ten-cent store, everything faded from 
her mind except to get the best value she could for Mrs. 
Morphy’s money. “Sure I’ll die before I git near the fixin’s 
section,” she said to herself, as she pushed her way slowly 
along. The Lady’s calm warm atmosphere, the majestic Beauty 
roses, the all-enveloping bath-towel, Ireland’s supremacy, the 
rudeness of the present day and generation, all these things 
vanished from her mind, and there was left only one fixed de- 
termination — to cleave the human obstacle and reach her aim — 
the notion counter. 

When Miss McGee got home it was late. She stopped to 
pass the time of day with Mrs. Savourin (about whom the 
flavor of “mother” still hung) and then she went up-stairs to 
light her fire and make herself her cup of tea, and wash and 
dress and make ready for the midnight service. Rose would be 4 
coming for her — Ag too, perhaps. Ag was on the point of 
getting engaged, “the first of the bunch,” as Miss McGee put 
it to herself, and the fragrance of such an operation enveloped 
her. Miss McGee had never taken much interest in Ag; 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


147 


but now that Ed Furlong had arisen, she felt that she was a 
very reputable niece and that she was going to prove herself 
worthy of the name of woman (but not “Woman”). Yes, 
on the whole she hoped Ag might come too, and then they 
would all go to the service together, and in the midst of the 
light and beauty she would not need to feel she was alone. 

As she sat drinking the solitary cup of tea her thoughts wan- 
dered to Robert. “The poor bo’ oy,” she thought, “him workin’ 
there on his tired feet an’ me settin’ comf’table here.” The 
thought went through her like a knife that he must be wearied 
through, body and soul, that Christmas Eve was no Christmas 
Eve for him. “The choild!” she said — and a wave of infinite 
tenderness went through her. She would have given up her 
midnight service for him, she would have given up her joy in 
Christmas — her life — her God . . . she would have stood on 
her own tired feet until she dropped, and thought it bliss. . . . 

It was as she was sitting over this cup of tea on Christmas 
Eve that Miss McGee recognized that Robert was more to her 
than God. It suddenly came upon her that Robert was God 
to her. She felt as if she were a cup filled full to the brim 
with something infinitely precious — that her love for Robert 
was overflowing the edges of the cup and running down the 
outside of the cup and falling on quite extraneous things. She 
loved the world, as she sat alone at her little oblong table, life, 
all the people in the world — just because she loved Robert. She 
felt as if the world were not big enough for her love to take 
to itself. She felt as if her love were infinite — as if it had 
been from the beginning, and would go on to the end 

When Rose came in she put her arms round her and pressed 
her to her bosom. This was a part of her love — she embraced 
her with all the rest: and, as she held the young girl in her 
arms and felt the young warmth of her ... a spasm of 
jealousy shot through her. The universal love was shattered. 
“I’m glad he ain’t come tonoight,” she said to herself. “I’m 

glad he’s workin’ an’ ain’t here with us ” Out loud she 

said “where’s Ag, eh? I thought she’d maybe come with ye.” 
And Rose’s answer that Ag was gone to the midnight service 
with Ed’s folks meant nothing to her now. She felt, as Rose’s 
voice came to her from a long way off, that she had escaped 
a danger by Robert not being there. She looked into Rose’s 
fresh young face and she felt triumphant that Robert was not 
seeing it . . . and at the same time she felt ashamed. They 
went over to the church together. 


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OUR LITTLE LIFE 


CHAPTER XXI 

W HEN Robert came out of the Arwwdel Meat Store on 
this same Christmas Eve it was eleven o’clock and al- 
most Christmas Day. Already the bells of some of the 
churches had begun to chime — Christmas was in the air. It 
was cold, but not so bitterly cold as it had been all day long. 
Christmas Eve had been one of those dark gloomy waiting 
sort of days that come in Canada before a snow-fall. And 
now, as Robert put his rubbered feet on the step that led from 
the Arwwdel Market to the side-walk, he felt that it was snow- 
covered and soft. A thick padding of untrodden snow lay 
on it — Robert was the first to leave the store after cleaning-up 
time — and the world beyond the step was an indistinct white 
world, the objects in it only visible as in a dream through 
the fast-falling veil of snow. 

Robert was past complaining. He was tired, so tired, that 
his one thought was bed. He had been in the store all day 
long from eight in the morning, busy all day long (with his 
lunch-time cut in half), turning, whenever his own counter 
did not need his services, to the meat counter on his right or 
to the fish and poultry counter to his left in order to give first 
aid to the over-driven salesmen there. All day long he had 
worked in uncongenial substances. The chickens and turkeys 
were livid to the touch; the slimy fish made him shiver; the 
soft luscious dampness of the beefsteak gave him a feeling 
of nausea — he loathed the great white slabs on which the 
beefsteaks lay, all running with raw red juices. 

He had done his best. He had seen around him all day long 
over-driven and frantic salesmen who would have done as much 
for him; and he had turned to with a will, weighed birds, 
recommended beasts, earned what the Arwndel Meat Market 
could never have repaid him if it had tried for a year. 

He had been slightly mollified towards fate by hearing from 
a fellow-salesman that all were to receive (as every Christmas, 
only Robert did not know it) at the end of the week a “bonus” 
on their salaries. He knew quite well that this bonus was 
only Latin for the Arwndel Directors sliding out of their 
Canadian debts — but all the same the thought of having twenty 
dollars in his pocket to put by or spend at once, to do any- 
think he liked with, mollified him in spite of his better sense. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


H9 

He felt exactly as every employee in the store felt, and as 
every Director knew every employee would feel. He felt, as 
he walked through the store on his way out of it, much as 
Miss McGee felt when she came walking home from the Lady’s 
fingering the unexpected dollar and a" half in her purse. 

When Robert stepped on to the soft cushion-ey side-walk, a 
feeling of thankfulness that he had seen the last of the Ariwdel 
Market for thirty-six hours at least filled his heart. He had not 
gone a dozen steps on his way when he came to the very flower- 
shop that Miss McGee had stood in front of earlier in the day. 
He went past it, his head bent to prevent the softly-driving snow 
from blinding his eyes, but he had not gone twenty yards 
further, when something made him pause. He had hardly 
been aware of passing the flower-shop, but something inside him 
must have noticed, and this something now called to him 
“Stop!” He did stop and, after a moment’s thought, he went 
back till he reached the shop, and then he stood before it 
looking earnestly in at its window. 

The window had changed its appearance since Miss McGee 
had looked longingly into it earlier in the day. The arrogant 
Beauty roses were all gone, the clustering violets in their green 
bowl had disappeared. The Killameys had gone their way — 
the pale orchids which had formed a coup d’ceil in the middle 
of the window were nowhere to be seen. Nothing was left but 
some roses in the comer — small deep-colored roses, the color 
of red wine when it is held up to the light, short-stemmed, 
with a clear glossy foliage . . . and the roses were pointed in 
shape, as yet in bud, and the texture of the petals was velvety 
on one side and satiny on the other. Robert was completely 
ignorant of the nomenclature of the modem flower. He knew 
that these were roses, and that was all he knew. After a sec- 
ond’s hesitation he entered the store and, not being accustomed 
to enter any store except the Arwwdel Market, he stood near the 
door, hesitatingly, waiting rather humbly (as people wait when 
they haven’t much money in their pockets) for the “young lady” 
in the background to come forward and conduct a sale. 

When Robert had asked how much the roses were and had 
heard what the amount was, he was taken aback. Not ever 
having bought flowers in ‘the Dominion he was unconscious of 
the prices frost and snow must exact before they can produce 
what mere sunlight does — for nothing. He stood and looked 
rather wistfully at the roses, and with the hand that he had 
slipped out of his old worsted gloye, he fingered the loose 


150 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

money he had at the bottom of his trousers’ pocket. He said 
nothing. 

“See here,” said the young lady; she was in a hurry, tired 
to death, as anxious to get rid of Robert as he could possibly 
be to go. “See here! If you wa’ant them roses have ’em — 
quick. They’re the la’ast we got an’ this store has to close up 
— right now. You kin have ’em fer . . — and she mentioned 
a very moderate sum. 

It was a moderate sum all right, as the young lady would 
have said, but it wasn’t moderate to Robert. However, he 
somehow felt that, sensible or not sensible, those roses he must 
have. Even had the young lady not brought down the price at 
all he would have had them; and now, with no further hesita- 
tion, he brought his hand out of his trousers’ pocket, and, 
drawing off his other worsted glove, he counted the sum into 
the young lady’s hand. 

It was a new sensation to be counting money into someone 
else’s hand — and getting the article yourself! 

“Wait jes’ a minnut, eh,” said the young lady. “I got to 
bawx ’em for you.” 

She retired to the back of the shop where, near midnight 
as it was, wrapping and “bawxing” and addressing and deliver- 
ing over parcels to tired errand-boys was still going on. As 
Robert stood in the front shop by the window, with the snow 
melting off him and running down and making a pool about 
his feet and the crusted snow on his eyebrows and lashes 
distilling itself into drops and bathing his cheeks, it suddenly 
came over him that Christmas is the enjoyment of the very few 
at the bitter expense of the great many. 

“That’s why we don’t like it,” he said to himself — and as 
he said it, the truth came home with force and certainty. 
“Poor souls!” he thought, as he looked at the tired faces of 
the young ladies bawxing the flowers, and at the black-circled 
eyes of the drenched and half-frozen errand-boys. “Poor souls ! 
— they” — and as it came over him that he was one of them he 
changed the “they” to “we ” — “we bear the brunt of the Christ- 
mas joy.” And he was getting lost in his reflections, standing 
in the pool of melted snow he himself had made, when the young 
lady came back with the flowers wrapped in cotton batting, 
all tissue-papered and bawxed, in a fit condition to face frost 
and snow. 

“Guess we’ll have all the snow we want this time, eh!” the 
young lady said with a tired smile. “Why yes, it’s late but 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


151 

we kin close up now, thank Gawd! Gee, Lew, git them shades 
down, eh, an’ hurry — rush,” she cried to an invisible someone in 
the background — and then to Robert. “You got them roses 
low-priced a’alright. Good value, eh? Well, you’re wel- 
come.” 

She closed the doors after him, and the shades came down 
with a rattle over the plate glass window. She too, poor young 
lady, once the mess at the back of the store was cleaned up, 
was free for thirty-six hours. 

As Robert made his way further along the heavy snow-covered 
streets after leaving the flower-shop his spirits were high. They 
seemed to have flown up in some mysterious way. “She’ll like 
these,” he said to himself more than once. “They’ll make her 
happy, poor soul.” He hugged the box to him, and almost 
seemed to feel the velvety softness of the deep-red petals within 
the box and to inhale the fragrance of the flowers — a sweet 
clear far-reaching fragrance that made one hold one’s breath 
so as to possess more and more of it. “She’ll like them,” he 
said, “they’ll give her a minute’s pleasure . . . .” 

The image of Miss McGee kept coming up again and again 
before him as he went hurrying along through the soft ob- 
stinately-falling snow. He thought of her as she had looked 
on the night of the visit of the “Pollis” (and all that had 
seemed ridiculous in her on that occasion seemed to fade away) 
and he thought of her totally unreasoning change of front just 
because the Janitress had spoken to the young man of his 
mother (and there, too, she seemed merely pathetic). He saw 
her as she sat listening to the reading of his Canada Book, 
her face framed in her hands, her eyes intent, her whole body 
absolutely still — every muscle listening and trying to under- 
stand. He thought of her as he had so often seen her — anxious 
to please — wanting to share . . . and it came on him with a 
swift realization of the truth that he had a friend in Miss Mc- 
Gee. He was drenched with the wet snow by the time he 
reached Penelope’s Buildings, and, as he went up the stairs he 
left a little hard cake of wet snow on every step (which later 
would slowly melt and run as little separate rivulets, converg- 
ing gradually into one stream, down the stairs to make a pool 
in the hall) and he felt that the snow had penetrated his ancient 
rubbers and reached through his old boots to his feet, and that 
his feet were ice-cold and stony. But, as he reached Miss Mc- 
Gee’s flat and, stooping down at her door, laid his box of 
flowers across her threshold, he was happy. He was quite un- 


152 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

reasonably and unreasoningly happy. He felt even high-spirited 
— -for him. 

“She’ll like them,” he said to himself once more. And 
he reflected that soon she would be coming across the threshold 
for her midnight service and that she would find the flowers 
there, waiting for her; through the badly-fitting door he even 
faintly heard the sound of her voice, talking to Rose. “She’ll 
like them . . . !” 

To the tune of that he went further up-stairs — and went 
supperless to bed. 

“Never mind,” he said to himself consolingly as he undressed 
— he had got into the lonely way of talking to, and con- 
soling, himself. “Never mind. You can have your breakfast 
to-morrow — any time you like. ...” 

He turned over in his not-too-comfortable bed, and for once 
he felt thankful for it. He lay quietly awhile, worn-out, think- 
ing faintly of the day that was past, thank God, for ever. Then, 
to the sound of the Christmas bells, he fell asleep. Down-stairs 
Miss McGee, with the sound of the same Christmas bells in her 
ears, was making her way to the midnight Mass — with Robert’s 
red roses in her heart and her thanks to God rising out of 
her soul. As the two of them turned out of Penelope’s Build- 
ings and into the snowy night, she looked sideways at Rose’s 
clear-cut face with the softly-falling flakes of snow between 
her and it. “Ef I was young,” she thought. “Ef I was young 
again.” And with the thought of that lying by the thought of 
the roses in her heart she passed through St. Patrick’s big 
door — into the light. 


CHAPTER XXII 

I T was towards the end of January that the next thing hap- 
pened. Up to that time it was merely a case of the com- 
mon round and the trivial task not giving anyone any- 
thing they wanted to ask. But at the end of the month the 
monotony was broken up once more for Robert and for Miss 
McGee, by a Lecture. If this does not sound very enthralling 
a break to those who have things happening every day of their 
lives, it must be remembered that any change was to our two a 
welcome thing: a Lecture — even that! — may assume rainbow 
hues and become iridescent in the imagination of those who are 
starving for mental sustenance. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


*53 

One day as Miss McGee came downstairs five minutes late 
for her work, she met the letter-man, as the Penelopians 
usually called him, on his rounds. She often did this, but 
as she expected nothing from him — except her one letter at 
Christmas-time — she usually passed him with a cheerful “Good 
mornin’, Mr. Bellerose,” or “a cold mornin’, eh,” or “a war’rm 
day, God save us,” as the case might be. Mr. Bellerose would 
reply, “Mais, sure, Missus,” or with any other Canadien 
phrase that might occur to him. And they would pass on 
their separate ways. This morning, however, he stopped, “At- 
tendez, Missus, wait,” said he: and, ferreting in the bundle in 
his hand, he produced or rather shucked off a letter. “Pour 
vous,” he said, “bonne chance!” And he went further up. 

Miss McGee stood with the letter in her hands. She was so 
astonished at receiving it she couldn’t get further. She had had 
Doll’s letter — this couldn’t be from Doll. Beta Hendricks sent 
her a card at Christmas-time: that card had come. What was 
this! Miss McGee never heard from anyone else. If anyone 
wished to communicate with her, or wished her services for any 
particular day, she (it was always a she) found out where her 
work had taken her and telephoned there. “Say, is Miss Mc- 
Gee there? Can I speak with her?” Miss McGee would go 
to the telephone, more or less apologetically (to signify that 
it was not her telephone and she knew it), and the bargain 
would be struck. She never got letters from anyone. For all the 
benefits she received at the hands of the Dominion Postal Ser- 
vice she might have been a native of Wa-Wa, Central Africa. 

She stood still on the stair making herself later than ever, 
and turned the unopened letter over and over in her hands. 
She looked at the sides and back as earnestly as she regarded 
the front; she glued her eyes to it with such persistance that 
it seemed almost as if she sought to tear the secret from the 
gummed-up envelope. “For the love of God!” she kept ejacu- 
lating. She slowly descended the stair, gazing at the envelope 
all the time, and it was^not till she reached the side-walk 
that she could make up her mind to open it. “My!” she said 
several times as she took a hair-pin from her hair (what do 
men do without them?) and neatly slit the envelope from side 
to side. As she did this — her hands were positively trembling 
with excitement — she never noticed that she was holding the 
envelope asquint. Two green cardboard tickets slipped out of 
the envelope and fell with a small thud on the frost-bound earth 
below. 


154 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Well!” said Miss McGee, stooping to pick them up. 

“Well,” she said once more, as she was picking them up: 
and then, to make things square, she repeated, “For the love 
of God, eh . . . !” 

The green cardboard tickets were two admissions to a Lecture 
to be given the same evening at the Hall of Regalia’s “Art 
Circle.” On each ticket was stamped “Row A”; and in the 
right-hand corner of each ticket was printed in smaller type 
“two dollars.” 

Miss McGee stood regarding the green pasteboard in a state 
of stupefaction. In all her varied experience of life such a 
thing had never come her way before. She looked at the 
envelope again. Yes, it was correct: “Miss McGee, Penelope’s 
Buildings, Corner O’Neil Street and Drayton Place, Regalia 
City.” She stood stock-still on the side-walk, utterly oblivious 
of the biting wind that swept round and through her, and she 
gazed, first at the envelope and then at the tickets, as if she 
wanted to gaze beyond them where elucidation might be. 

Mr. Bellerose passed her on his way down again. “Frawsty 
eh,” said he, once more offering a comment on the weather in 
his kindly French wish to be agreeable. “Fait mal au rheu- 
mateeque, you bet,” — and he laughed and tapped his leg. 

“I s’pose,” Miss McGee said absent-mindedly. Had she been 
her usual self, she would have recollected that Mr. Bellerose 
had had sciatica, and that he liked his sciatic nerve to be 
asked after. As it was she merely watched him go further on 
his rounds with his brisk, only-slightly-halting step: and, as 
he turned the corner and disappeared round O’Neil Street, 
she roused herself. 

“My God,” she said, out loud — her language, when Robert 
was out of hearing, tended occasionally to the same vivid color- 
ing as Mrs. Savourin’s, though without Mrs. Savourin’s brazen 
reds and screaming yellows — “My Gawd, Sir, I’ll be all behoind 
toime.” 

And she went scuttling round to O’Neil Street after Mr. 
Bellerose, and jumped on to the street-car that went to Prince 
Leopold Avenue, where her day’s work was; and, gazing absent- 
mindedly out of the window after she was seated, she saw Mr. 
Bellerose just turning the corner down the next street that lay 
parallel to Drayton Place. 

It wasn’t until she was in sight of the house she was bound 
for that it occurred to her to look inside the envelope once more, 
and then — there sure was a scrap of paper that had escaped 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


155 

her eyes the first time she opened the envelope. The tickets 
had been wrapped inside this scrap of paper, and they, being 
heavy, had fallen out of the slanted envelope and left the bit 
of paper inside. 

Miss McGee drew the paper out. It was a slip torn hastily 
off a pad, and on it was written in a hand that had seen much 
service. “Dear Miss McGee, Can you make use of these? I 
am called out of town on business, and I cannot use them my- 
self. The speaker is a poet and an Irish one, so perhaps he 
may interest you. Good enjoyment, if you go! I shall want 
some work done soon, so I hope to see you before very long. 
E. M.” The communication bore all the marks of haste, and 
the initials at the end were all but unreadable. They struck 
no light in Miss McGee’s mind, and on the sidewalk of Prince 
Leopold Avenue after she left the car she came to another 
stand-still, almost as determined as the one on the stairs of 
Penelope’s Buildings. 

“Sure, my, things is quare!” she said to herself, ruminating. 
And then, with a slap of her hand on her thigh, she said out 
loud, “Be all the Saints, ’tis her!” 

Of course it was the Lady. Who else could it be? The 
initials were Eileen Martyn; and who but the lady would have 
written that way, or written at all, or ever thought of sending 
the tickets! Her ways were quare, and she was quare — but 
Miss McGee rather liked her. “Sure ’twill be the treat,” she 
said to herself, putting back the tickets and the note into the 
envelope, and the envelope into her purse. “ ’Twill be the treat 
a’alroight,” she said; and then, posting along to make up for 
lost time as well as she could, she began to revolve matters 
in her head. They needed a deal of revolving. 

The first thing to do was to placate the customer. Twenty- 
three minutes out of the legitimate day were gone, and Miss 
McGee did not wish (as things were) to have to stay and 
make them up. The first thing then was to get things off the 
bias, as Miss McGee herself said. She did that. It was not 
easy to do but she did it. Miss McGee could overthrow the 
box of dressmaking pins by an untoward movement of her 
elbow, and then, by the simple ingenuousness of the tone in 
which she said “Did I do that!” cheat the customer into (al- 
most) believing that she had done it herself. When anyone 
can do that he, or she, or it, is capable of any diplomatic 
move. By midday, not only was the lateness of Miss McGee’s 
arrival dispersed from the Prince Leopold customer’s mind, but 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


156 

she was willing — nay eager — that Miss McGee should go into 
town and get a bit of stuff that was declared to be indispensable 
for the furthering of the work. v ‘T hate to go,” Miss McGee 
had said. “I jes’ hate to loose yer toime, Madam.” (This cus- 
tomer was “Madam. 2 ’) “But ef we don’t git that piece right- 
away I guess yer gown’s goin’ to look a koind of a has-been 
to the end.” She paused on this, and then she added in a 
soft persuasive tone, “I can’t bear you should look out of 
stoyle, Madam.” 

“Say, that McGee is one good woman, be-lieve me” said the 
customer to a female relative as they sat down to lunch. “She’s 
skipped out, gawn running awf to fetch some sample she wants. 
I guess she has my interests at heart all right. She’ll work her 
head awf to see me looking good. She’s an ar’rtist.” 

Meanwhile the ar’rtist was speeding in the direction of the 
Arwwdel Meat Market there to hold a conference with Robert. 

“Say, kin you come?” said she in an eager whisper over the 
glass-covered counter. “It’s goin’ to be some lecture I tell you. 
An’ some po-ut, be-lieve me” 

Robert was willing. He leaned over the counter, looking very 
hygienic and very unlike himself in his white suit, and he said 
in a low voice, “Who is it that’s going to speak?” 

But that Katie did not know. It was a Po-ut and an Irish 
one and who could want better than that. “She (Miss McGee 
did not further particularize Miss Martyn) said it was a po-ut. 
An’ she said he was Irish. They’re po-uts that comes from 
Ireland a’alroight,” Miss McGee remarked. “I guess it’s a’al- 
roight.” 

Robert left it at that. He was -to be at Miss McGee’s “place” 
at 7:45 sharp, and she would be ready for him, and they would 
set off together for the Art Circle. 

“I’ll have the cup o’ hot milk fer ye,” Katie McGee said, 
in a lower whisper than ever. “An’ I’ll git a bit’ o’ sup- 
per when we gits home. Kin ye hold out that long, eh?” 

Robert said he thought he could, and it was settled so. 
Robert watched his friend go briskly through the store and dis- 
appear through the swing glass-door. It had made a little 
break in his day, just seeing her friendly face. The last 
words, “Sure it’s the grand toime we’ll have together,” rang 
in his ears. His spirits went up. It would be fun to be 
doing anything. . . . 

“Sure, that’ll kape her quiet, eh,” Miss McGee said to 
herself, making her way back to Prince Leopold Avenue, a 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


157 

short time after, with her parcel in her hand. “Ef she says 
I been long I’ll tell her I couldn’t match the sample.” 

When she rang at the bell she was quite out of breath. 
“My,” she said, “ain’t ut the limutt!” She paused, waiting 
for the door to be opened. “Anythin’ll do fer her I guess,” 
she remarked. And then, out loud, she said, “God help me I” 
But whether this was an invocation for pardon to God, or 
whether Miss McGee felt her patience at waiting for the door 
to be opened was near an end, or whether she was merely 
out of breath — who shall say? 

The customer was deloighted! 


CHAPTER XXIII 

W HAT the Po-ut thought of Regalia, history sayeth not. 
He probably thought badly of its climate, for he 
“struck,” as Miss McGee said, the very coldest night 
of all the year. It wasn’t merely cold, it was arctic, polar, 
super-polar; it was the coldest night ever conceived by the 
imagination of God : as Miss McGee and Robert made their 
way to the Art Circle of Regalia (a pillared building in the 
classic style) they shivered and shook in their insufficient 
clothing. 

“It would need to be someone worth hearing after this,” 
Robert said to himself. He said nothing out loud; the cup 
of condensed milk which Miss McGee had had ready for him 
when he called for her was proving a very insufficient stay and 
refuge against the winds that were blowing straight down on him 
from the North Pole. “I wish I had stayed at home,” he 
thought, as a blast struck him. He felt, walking along Vic- 
toria Crescent (the names of Regalia’s streets tended to be 
loyal) as if no verse, however lovely, could possibly com- 
pensate him for what he was going through on his way to 
hear it. 

“Listen!” said Miss McGee impressively; it was as if she 
were answering Robert’s unspoken thought. “I have a koind 
of a notion this Po-ut’ll be some man. I guess he’s swell 
a’alroight.” The wind cut her remarks short by taking her 
breath away. 

Robert paid no attention. Miss McGee’s remark struck him 
as being beside the point. And besides politeness, pleasant- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


158 

ness, sociability, desires to please, were rapidly coming to seem 
to him mere abstract ideas. He forced his way along, clutch- 
ing an uneasy foothold on the frozen snow, and he bent his 
head low down to avoid the piercing shafts of wind. Inside 
his mind, and growing up like Jack’s beanstalk or Jonah’s 
gourd, was the idea that he wished he had stayed at home. 
“It’s no good her talking like that,” he said to himself im- 
patiently. 

When they reached the Hall it was all lighted up. It 
looked rather imposing; and as neither of them had ever had 
a chance of being at the Art Circle before, it was something 
of an ordeal to go up the broad stone steps and into the vesti- 
bule, and then up more stairs, and on into the Hall where 
the Po-ut was to speak. Robert was so thankful to get any- 
where out of the cold that at first he was hardly conscious 
where he was or where he was going; but as the steam-heat 
began to steal up the sleeves of his coat and the legs of his 
trousers, he came back to life, as it were, and glanced round. 
He liked the staircase with its red-carpeted steps, and the 
plastercasts — so familiar, most of them! — that decorated the 
corner niches in the staircase walls. He looked at the Venus 
of Milo with a smile. He had never felt so friendly towards 
her aS now, when they met thus unexpectedly in Regalia. He 
felt like going up and saying to her, “How are you? What 
ages sinces we met.” And when, a step or two further at a 
turn in the stair, he caught sight of “Sleep” up on a bracket 
with his broken wing and his exquisite parted lips, he uttered 
a little exclamation, and caught his breath, and stood still, 
gazing. 

“How lovely,” he said involuntarily. He felt a little as he, 
had felt that day he lay under the leafless maple and looked 
up through the branches at the winter sky; but not quite. It 
seemed to him now, confronted with “Sleep,” almost intol- 
erable to be so near such beauty and not to be a part of it. 
A desire, so strong as to make him feel shaken and sick, came 
over him — to be in some place where beauty was a part of 
life, where a thing like “Sleep” would seem possible and ev- 
eryday and not too good to be true. . . . 

Miss McGee stood still and looked with him. She always 
wanted to admire what he admired; but she was anxious and 
nervous, and self-consciousness amongst all these strange peo- 
ple, some of them in evening dress, clothed her as a garment 
might. “Come on,” she said, gently touching Robert’s arm 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


159 

with her finger. “Come on, eh. We want to git in an’ git 
seated good before the Po-ut gits star’rted awf.” 

The fact was that Miss McGee was a little shaken. She 
had never in all her life been the possessor of two dollar seats 
before; and she wanted to act the part: and she wasn’t sure 
that she knew how. She was bound she was going to walk into 
those seats as if she had walked into such every evening since 
life began; therefore, though she stood before “Sleep,” she 
wasn’t able to look at it. The .beauty of the calm face ex- 
isted not for her. Perhaps at any time she might have thought 
it “queer”: but now she really saw it not at all. When Rob- 
ert did “come on” and they did walk into the seats provided 
by Miss Martyn, it was Robert and not Miss McGee at all 
who walked into them “as to the manner born” as Miss McGee 
was fond of saying. It wasn’t the first time Robert had been 
in such seats as that. His head was full of the beauty of the 
cast he had just been looking at, he forgot all about his shab- 
by clothes and the unfortunate rubbers he wore with a tear 
in the sides and the back of them; he merely reverted to type 
and calmly handed Miss McGee’s tickets to the attendant, 
received back his portion, walked into the third row of seats, 
and sat down on the chair indicated to him. He thought 
nothing about it at all. Miss McGee was conscious that there 
was a difference between Robert’s way of taking his seat and 
hers. She felt a little disconcerted at her own anxiety, and 
at the same time she felt proud of her companion. “Bless 
um,” she thought in the midst of a rather topsy-turvy mind, 
“he’s one gen’leman bor’rn. He knows the ways of stoyle an’ 
he goes them ways!” She felt glad and proud to be in the 
company of such a “happy Willie.” 

“ ’Tain’t as swell as what I thought ut would be,” Miss 
McGee said in a whisper to Robert, when she was settled in 
her seat and her mind. “I guess this is a low-priced crowd 
a’alroight.” Miss McGee had expected the Art Circle to look 
something like the Hotel Fornaro where degage people would 
be sitting, not eating ice cream as on the hotel occasion but 
drinking in the Po-ut’s utterances in the same smart way, and 
lo and behold, there wasn’t a smart thing to be seen. Miss 
McGee herself looked as smart as anyone. This fact, when 
she had grasped it, saddened and at the same time exhilarated 
her. Had she known what kind of a bunch it would be to hear 
the Po-ut — a mixture of a few academicals and a great many 
ordinary Regalians — she wouldn’t have thought twice about 


i6o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


getting into her two dollar seat. “Well, I guess they know 
things, p’raps, if they don’t look good,” she said to herself, 
not to Robert this time — consolingly and she settled herself 
to enjoyment. 

“Ain’t ut great, eh?” she whispered in Robert’s ear, after 
a space. In spite of the absence of “stoyle” she was feeling 
it an occasion, and she had to confide in someone. “I guess 
it’s goin’ to be a’alroight, eh?” She wanted to know what 
he thought. 

Robert smiled. He was feeling comforted in the warm 
hall, and Miss McGee’s remarks did not rub him up the wrong 
way as they had done coming along. He said nothing at all: 
merely smiled. But his smile always satisfied Miss McGee. 
“I guess I didn’t oughter ta’alk, p’raps,” she said to herself. 
“He don’t ta’alk. I guess he knows.” Robert’s way of get- 
ting into his seat had assuredly not been lost on Miss Mc- 
Gee. 

She was silent after this — and Robert was as well pleased. 
In spite of the red roses and his pleasure in that occasion, 
he had never changed his mind about Katie McGee. The roses 
had been a spurt of emotion due to a snowy Christmas Eve 
and the chime of Christmas bells and a little bit of unexpected 
money coming into his pocket — all joined by an impulse of 
friendliness. He liked Miss McGee. But she didn’t interest 
him. She never would. 

Also he was feeling more on his own ground than usual. 
It was a long time since Robert Fulton had felt on his own 
ground as he did this evening. “So that's who it is!” he said 
half aloud, glancing down at the program the attendant had 
thrust into his hand. As he read the name of the Po-ut his 
spirits went up. He felt nearer to cheerfulness than he had 
felt for a long time. In an odd way he felt at home. This, 
after all, was the atmosphere. 

“D’ye know um, eh?” Miss McGee asked, coming close up 
to him so as to whisper in his ear. She felt more impressed 
with Robert than ever. But before there was time to an- 
swer — to do more than give the deprecatory nod and gesture 
of the hand that signifies “I don’t know him, but I do know 
him . . .” the Po-ut walked in. And the Lecture began. 

The Po-ut’s lecture was very beautiful. He seemed to speak 
simply: but it was a simplicity that had not only grown 
— it had been evolved, with how much care, and with what 
anxious work! He threw into the Hall at Regalia on that frosty 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


161 


January night words that were like gems. They seemed to 
glow in the air: you could almost see them as you watched 
him standing quietly behind his reading-desk and looking at 
the audience over the manuscript that lay un-glanced at on 
the desk before him. There were words like red rubies, and 
other words like deep shining emeralds, and there were words 
like diamonds, white, glistening, colorless. As he spoke you 
seemed transported to a magic world where pure prose flowed 
naturally, as streams flow. You seemed to be cast out of Re- 
galia into an outer light # where there was music and rhythm 
and harmony of words. The Po-ut seemed of another world 
than the New World. He seemed, to look at him and to listen 
to him, never to have heard of dollars and cents; he seemed 
to be regulating his life (like Miss McGee’s Lady) by some 
quite other rule — and yet why was he in Regalia at all on 
this arctic night, speaking to the Regalians of things they 
had never heard of before? Was he not just touring the world 
seeking what he could make out of it by his gem-like 
words . . . ? 

When he read — and he read much verse of his own — he 
read apparently simply, as he spoke: but, once more, it was 
a simplicity attained by great effort, a simplicity that was 
born of strain. He stood behind the reading-desk, and when 
he read his eyes glowed with a mystic light, his pale skin 
seemed to grow paler, he tossed his dark hair off his brow 
with a long white hand. He too, like his simplicity, seemed 
to have been evolved with effort and stress. 

To Miss McGee the Po-ut was something like Robert’s book. 
It was all very fine and magnificent but she understood noth- 
ing about it at all. She liked to watch. The Po-ut’s voice 
gave her at times a taste of the joy she had had out of the 
playing of the bo’oy with the velvet jackut. The rhythms 
of the voice suggested the more complicated rhythms of the 
musician. But for all she knew the whole thing might have 
been Sanscrit; and as she sat gazing at the Po-ut with her 
large eyes, her mind was a strange conglomeration of ideas. 
She thought “Ireland made um!” And she thought, “Say, 
ef he ain’t got the foine coat to his back a’alroight!” And 
she thought, “I guess he’s swa’all!” When she glanced half- 
timidly at Robert to see what he was thinking she said to 
herself, “Sure, he’s a’alroight!” And all the time she was 
sitting gazing surprisedly at the Po-ut she said to herself, 
“By gosh, he’s quare!” 


162 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Robert sat entranced. Possibly if the Po-ut had come his 
way in the old ante-Regalian days he might have felt critical 
and picked faults in him. But now he felt as one feels when 
one sees food after long abstinence. He was starving, and he 
swallowed the Po-ut whole, without even stopping to take in 
his full flavor. He listened to him greedily — that soft west- 
country Irish, so different, oh, so different! from the Irish 
over-seas — how lovely it seemed to Robert! He felt as if he 
could go on listening forever to those charming cadences, sit 
there, hungry and tired as he was after his long day’s work, 
just letting the cadences sink in. . . . 

It seemed to Robert that he was alive again. He felt as 
if he had been dug up and as if he were above-ground in an 
air he could breathe. He had a feeling that someone was 
talking sense — at last. As he sat there a tiny bit of his mind 
seemed to be still at the Dairy Counter, giving change, say- 
ing, “Yes, Madam,” and loathing it. But all the rest of him 
was repudiating that part of himself as dead, useless, putrid 
— the real Robert Fulton stretched out to the Po-ut, sensitive 
(as Miss McGee never could be) to the Po-ut’s rhythms, per- 
ceptive of his meanings, happily understanding even what 
he didn’t say. And in the back part of his mind where the 
Arwwdel Meat Market kept moving and agitating and wor- 
rying, Robert kept asking himself what became of this liv- 
ing Robert all the dead days of uncongenial work. . . . 

“It isn’t life,” something in him kept saying, as he pic- 
tured himself tramping to his work and tramping back again 
at night. And, hauntingly, St. Paul’s words came into his 
mind, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” 
He sat, intensely alive for the moment, conscious of his mind 
being sliced into two distinct parts — back in the Arwwdel 
Market with one part of himself, and with the other drink- 
ing in the stream of the Po-ut’s verse — watching the gems out 
of the Po-ut’s mouth go shimmering through the air. 

The Regalians were not of the same mind as Robert. They 
were a good deal more like Miss McGee, only they hadn’t got 
a Robert to be proud of. To them the Po-ut was a crank. 
They didn’t like him. They thoroughly disliked his hair. They 
thought his words affected and dull, and what he had to say 
silly, and at intervals they whispered to one another, “Say, 
when is this stuff going to stop awf ? There is no meat in ut.” 
The rhythms that entranced Robert worried them. They didn’t 
see that they led anywhere. They didn’t want to be in that 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


163 

land where Robert Fulton was wandering, and what they did 
want was that the lecture should come to an end and they 
could go home to bed. The Po-ut, had he not been so en- 
wrapped in himself, would have seen that he was not carrying 
his audience along with him. But perhaps there is something 
hypnotic in the influence of rhythm — to those who are sus- 
ceptible to it. Robert was unconscious of the flight of time; 
Miss McGee was willing it should go on as long as it liked: 
perhaps the Po-ut didn’t know how long he was speaking, or 
very distinctly even where he was: or perhaps, behind that 
pale skin and mystic eye, he did know well enough, and just 
was determined to finish his five and forty minutes — and 
get his dollars? 

Suddenly the voice stopped. Robert came down to earth 
with one great big bump. He would have to go to the Mar- 
ket to-morrow morning, and if he were late he would have 
to pay a fine. He was solidly tied up in this world, he was 
part of its machinery; if he ceased to play his part in the 
machinery of this world, he would be drawn into the machin- 
ery and ground to powder. He sat up on the two dollar seat 
and he heaved one big sigh. The treat was over and he was 
going back to Penelope’s Buildings — and he didn’t know how 
he should bear it. 

When they got home Miss McGee poked up her fire and 
broke up the ‘‘backing” of small wet coal she had left to keep 
it alight ; and she got a fine handsome, blaze. In a short 
space of time she set before Robert two sausages, one cup of 
cocoa, and a slice of bread and butter. She set the same be- 
fore herself ; and though it seemed a come-down from the Po-ut, 
still they were both hungry (Robert was starving — the cup of 
condensed milk was the only thing between himself and 
lunch-time), and so the food tasted good. Robert ate 
absent-mindedly, hardly tasting what he was eating: but 
he was glad of the food, now that he had partially re- 
turned to earth, and he felt grateful to Miss McGee for pro- 
viding it. 

“What on earth would I do without you?” he asked her, 
catching her eye. 

And Miss McGee blushed. 

The color rose up from her heart and flooded her sagging 
cheeks. It rushed like a wave over her face and neck — her 
very hands seemed pink as she laid them on the table and 
sat looking across at Robert. She said nothing. But the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


164 

color rose up in her face — died away — rushed back in a great 
tide of emotion. . . . 

After a moment she took up her knife and fork and went 
on eating her sausages. 

“Sure,” she said, in that Irish that was so different — so 
different ! — from the Po-ut’s, “sure, Mr. Fulton, ’tis a pleasure 
anyway to do things fer ye. Ye’re,” she hesitated — she hesi- 
tated painfully, “so — so dear to me,” she said. “I’d do any- 
thin'.” 

She stooped over the fire and reached for the frying-pan. 

“Will I fry ye another sausage?” she said. “Ye’re hun- 
gry, sure. . . 


CHAPTER XXIV 

W HEN the Po-ut went away from Regalia the chances 
are that he thought he had left nothing behind him. 
He had. He had left Robert Fulton an impulse to 

work. 

It was impossible to say whence this impulse came. Rob- 
ert had sat and listened to the lecture and when he had come 
home he had felt that he too must say something — not like 
that, but in his own manner and as he could. The Regalians 
were wrong when they said there was no meat in the Po-ut’s 
discourse. There was meat and bone too, and the proof was 
that Robert was able to make a meal of what the Po-ut had 
said, digest it, and thrive upon it. Man cannot thrive on 
style alone. There must be, if sustenance is to come, some- 
thing either behind or below the style — either something be- 
hind to steady it, or, if it be the real creative thing, a root 
from which it can grow. The Po-ut’s discourse had seemed 
to consist of shimmering words which he flung into the air, 
and which shone and glittered there, like gems. But this was 
maya evidently, and an illusion. They weren’t gems. They 
were nourishing food, on which one whom such food suited, 
could live and grow fat. The Regalians couldn’t live on the 
Po-ut’s remarks because they didn’t understand them and 
therefore could neither digest nor assimilate them. Miss Mc- 
Gee could make little out of the discourse because, though the 
beauty of the language dimly affected her, it didn’t mean 
anything to her — and so the effect rapidly passed off. But 
Robert! — even so early as the same night, when he was toss- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


165 

ing on a sleepless bed with Miss McGee’s sausages break- 
ing the peace inside of him, was saying to himself, “I must 
work. Why not? Haven’t I things to say?” He didn’t 
think he had gems to cast on the air, or beautiful verse to 
draw out of himself. He made no mistake at all as to qual- 
ity. And he didn’t think either that there would be any 
special commercial advantage in his working — the commercial 
aspect wasn’t in his mind at all. He merely felt he must do 
— something, he didn’t quite know what, create a little bit 
of sense or beauty in the 7 Canada Book, perhaps. Oddly 
enough (in the middle of the night) the desire seemed to be 
father to the power. Ideas that he had longed after — sweated 
after — pursued with momentary haste and then abandoned with 
disheartened leisure, came trooping into his head, and swirled 
about there. He was conscious of whole regiments of ideas 
pushing in the greatest disorder into his brain and then stand- 
ing waiting about for his gray matter to lead them into action. 

“Of course,” he said, sitting upright on his uncomfortable 
bed, “of course. Why didn’t I think of that before?” And 
as he turned his pillow and gave it a thump with his fist 
before laying his head on it again, he said to himself, think- 
ing of the Po-ut’s lecture, “Fine! It was fine — fine . . 
And then, after a second, “Canada’s a great subject.” And 
then he lay half waking, half dozing, not unhappily at all, with 
a line of the Po-ut’s verse singing in his head, and balancing 
there as a twig balances in the wind — till the cold gray win- 
ter dawn came slowly streaking in through his eastern win- 
dow. 

As he got up into the ordinary everyday world, and his 
feet and legs felt how cold a place that is when 'there isn’t 
a fire in it, the whole regiments of ideas seemed to have dwin- 
dled to one: that it is a very difficult thing to write anything 
at all. In the cold chill light of the January morning the 
old gentleman (President of the “Art Circle” of Regalia) who 
the night before had arisen to ask the Po-ut the best hundred 
books on which to nourish the imagination of Regalian youth, 
ceased to be so abjectly ridiculous. After all, if one lives 
in this world, one has to find out things; and the Po-ut, an- 
swering hesitatingly that the Bible — Shakespeare — Old Irish 
Legends — Blake . . . were what he recommended as suste- 
nance seemed — absurd, if it were not blasphemy to say so. 
How could Regalia eat Blake? What awful fits of indiges- 
tion he would give it. And why hadn’t the Po-ut thought of 


i66 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


that? He was unpractical, the Po-ut, no good for this partic- 
ular life; the old gentleman was the really right representa- 
tive of the age. Robert recalled how the aspect of the Art 
Circle (and perhaps' rightly enough) had changed with the 
old gentleman’s utterances. Suddenly the fairy palace that the 
Po-ut had erected had fallen down, and in its place was a 
very respectable market where the old gentleman was taking 
gems for sale . . . and the next object to any rightly-consti- 
tuted mind was to go to the brokers’ with the hard cash the 
gems had brought and find suitable investments for the 
money. . . . 

Was it worth while in the world the old gentleman had 
created to try and do anything at all ? 

Morning is a depressing time. Still, if ideas were not so 
plentiful as the night before, Robert could make plans. We 
can all make plans; and we can all break them. Our com- 
mon humanity is held together by such efforts as that. Rob- 
ert, at the Arundel Market, was all day haunted by little 
bright-colored fragments of the Po-ut’s genius. Half-lines 
came singing in his head. He sought vainly for words that 
ended lines; as he took orders, beautiful broken phrases formed 
themselves in his mind, and out loud he said, “Anything fur- 
ther, Madam?” It was all very sordid and very depressing. 
The only thing that held the day together was the determi- 
nation that when he got home he would go up-stairs as soon 
as he had finished his meal with Miss McGee — and work. 
“I’ll have a fire,” he said to himself as he wrote down a long 
order a fat lady was giving him. “I don’t care what it costs 
. . . Cheese, Madam? Yes, we have an imported cheese— 
Brie. It will certainly give satisfaction . . . I’ll have a fire” 

When he got home he ran up-stairs and set a match to 
this fire he had laid in his mind in the morning. He felt 
an unusual tingle as he thought that he was going to begin 
to work again. For the last weeks depression had got between 
him and his writing, and nothing had seemed worth while. 
But now: he set a match to his fire, and he stood a moment 
watching the little flames creep round corners and through ob- 
stacles, and emerge, many-colored and as beautiful as the 
Po-ut’s verse, above the wood and coal. “I’ll have a good 
evening,” Robert said to himself; and he seemed to feel lit- 
tle flames of anticipation in his blood, creeping up and al- 
most reaching his brain. He ran down-stairs with an unac- 
customed lightness of step. “I’ve got to go as soon as we 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 167 

have had supper,” he announced. “I’ve got work to do to- 
night.” 

Miss McGee took the news of his leaving her in this un- 
timely way in perfectly good part. She had been entirely 
sincere when, on the two occasions when she had been “raised” 
as she herself called it, she had said she would do “anythin’ ” 
for him. She would. There was nothing that Miss McGee 
would have fallen short of: and, disappointing as it was that 
Robert should thus want to go, apparently, there was nothing for 
it but to assent. She did say, “Couldn’t ye wor’rk down here, 
eh? ’Tis the pity ye should be bur’rnin’ yer own coal an’ 
eatin’ mooney.” But when Robert assured her that he must 
be alone to work, she accepted that too. She never doubted 
that Robert was as good as the Po-ut. Better. She had the 
utmost certainty in her heart that Robert had only to get 
a hearing and the St. Lawrence river itself would go on fire. 
The fact that she didn’t understand what he wrote was in his 
favor. “Sure, ’tis the great things ye can’t understand,” she 
said to herself. She hadn’t been able to understand the Po-ut 
either, and he was evidently a great grand man. Well, just 
give Robert his head — lei him have a chance . . . an’ we’ll 
see where Po-uts is then! Such was more or less Miss 
McGee’s meditation as she sat eyeing Robert after he said 
he must go and work alone. “Sure,” she said in a pensive 
voice, “’tis war’rm here an’ I’d set as quioet as a mouse!” 
But this was only thinking aloud. She immediately added, 
“But ef ye must, then go an’ bur’m yer own coal, an’ may 
God bless yer wor’rk.” 

It was on this evening, and just as Miss McGee said that, 
that Robert became clearly conscious of being thoroughly fond 
of her. It wasn’t so much what she said as the way she 
said it, that went to his heart. He** »mspoken attitude to him 
and his work touched him. Miss McGee’s words were often 
silly enough. Her accent was far, very far, from the Po-ut’s. 
But affection streamed through her inappropriate utterances, 
and her actual words sometimes seemed only transparencies 
through which something better shone. Robert looked at her 
good-humoredly — he hadn’t the faintest idea that her liking 
for him went beyond liking — and with a half-amused, half- 
deprecatory air, he said, “You want me to — to get on, don’t 
you, Miss McGee!” And he felt more humble than amused 
when he saw the look that this rather casual remark brought 
into her face. He did realize how she overrated him. “She 


i68 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


is a good old soul,” he thought to himself as he ran upstairs, 
“a good old soul.” He had said this often before, but he 
said it now in a more tender, kindly way. Her appreciation 
of him made him feel thoroughly humble as he sat himself 
down at his small deal table and prepared for the fray. “She 
is,” he kept thinking to himself, “she really is a, ... ” and 
the thought of Miss McGee’s goodness kept him going till he 
had set out his ink-pot and his sheets of cheap paper and 
the little piece of blotting-paper that he kept handy, and till 
he had got his porcupine-quill pen into his hand; and then 
he bent down over his table — and forgot all about her. 

The hours went past just as they had on the night when 
he began his Canada Book. He forgot, as he sat writing 
and considering with his eyes on the night outside, all about 
even the Po-ut. He forgot the world where he was and the 
squalidness of the Buildings he lived in, Miss McGee’s solici- 
tude, the dullness of life: he forgot all these for the hour, 
while he searched for the idea — and the word to clothe it in. 
His fire in the grate went on quietly burning itself out. Some- 
times a lightly-falling cinder ticked its way through the grate 
and settled peacefully to a gray feathery ash on the hearth- 
stone below. Such minute non-human noises just suited Rob- 
ert when he was working. They kept him in touch with the 
world he lived in, and they didn’t disturb him because they 
made him conscious of no individuality but his own. Even 
the sound of the French-Canadian voices outside, rising through 
the still winter air, didn’t get between him and his work. They 
too, at that distance, seemed hardly human. The men at the 
snow-plow called to their patient big horses, “Holal” 
“Avance done!” just as if they were in the France of three hun- 
dred years ago. Once or twice when these cries pushed up 
into Robert’s consciousness, he raised his head and sat, with 
his head slightly to one side, listening. He saw in his mind 
the noiseless snow-plow brushing its way through the drifts 
• — the great horses pulling, the snow-covered men tugging at 
the bridles, running by the side of the plow, shouting and 
encouraging their beasts. ... “I must do something with that 
some day,” he said once to himself — and he sat a moment 
with his slender pen balanced in his fingers. And then, with 
a start, he bent over the table again and got down something 
more in his exquisite script. 

That night, very late, as he lay between sleeping and wak- 
ing, the world seemed to him a beautiful one. He was fresh 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


169 

from work, he hadn’t had time to read over what he had 
written — he felt as if the whole universe were full of the glow 
of fire and the magic of verse. A memory of “Sleep” and 
his one wing slipped through his mind. He seemed to see 
the Po-ut’s white hand tossing his dark hair from his brow. 
He thought drowsily of the convolutions of the human brain 
—of the simplicities of beauty that man brings forth from the 
intricacies of his own fearful and wonderful make. The room 
for once was warm — luxurious. He dropped asleep. 

Perhaps Robert never had so happy a night in Penelope’s 
Buildings as this one he dreamed away with the Po-ut’s magic 
still working in his blood. 


CHAPTER XXV 

R OBERT’S impulse to work lasted three nights, and then 
he took down what he had written to Miss McGee to 
read it aloud to her. It was unfortunate that just on 
this night he should have landed on a loquacious mood, and 
that, in spite of his longing desire to begin to read, Miss 
McGee should have gone on talking. She didn’t understand. 
Had she known that he had come down bursting with the de- 
sire to share she would indeed have sat as mum as a mouse, 
as she herself said. Had she been able to look through those 
light blue eyes and to have seen down into the intricate workings 
of the mind, she would have thrown herself with energy, with' 
passion, with all the vitality that was in her into the dis- 
cussion of the chapter he had brought down with him to read. 
First she would have listened breathlessly, and then she would 
have talked. Not being able to see further than the flesh — 
how should she know what writing means to an author? — 
how should she realize that “a bit of stuff” is not something 
apart from, something above, but a thing belonging to and con- 
nected in the most intimate way with the’ life of its maker? 
— she just smiled and said, as she watched him put his man- 
uscript down on the sill, “So ye fetched a piece down to read, 
eh! Say, ef that ain’t great.” And passed on to considera- 
tions of Ag’s happiness in the married state — doubts as to 
Mrs. Morphy’s leg (which was acutely on her mind), and facts 
as to the cookery of Mrs. Glassridge’s chef. 

“An’ see here,” she said as to this last item, bringing fact 
and fiction together in the only way that makes true conver- 


i;o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


sation, “I want you to understand, Mr. Fulton, we got some 
tea to-noight. I see Mrs. Glassridge’s chef to-day, an’ says he 
to me, ‘I guess you some loike poy!’ says he. T guess I do/ 
says I. ‘Well, here’s some poy fer you/ he says. An’ say, my 
dear, it is one poy a’alroight.” 

Miss McGee laughed heartily at her own and the chef’s 
wit, and never — no, never since Robert had known her — had 
her amusement seemed so out of place, so trivial, so uncalled- 
for, and so silly. The glory the Po-ut had left behind him 
was passing off. Three more or less sleepless nights were tell- 
ing their tale. The miraculous wakefulness that a certain kind 
of sleepless night bestows on its victim was over; and it was 
gradually being succeeded by a lack of balance — an unnatural 
joyousness succeeding without reason to an almost equal tend- 
ency to depression and snappiness. 

“Come on, eh, an’ set down,” said Miss McGee. “I’ll be 
fixed in jes’ ha’alf-no-time.” She pointed hospitably to Rob- 
ert’s own seat, and went on making the tea. 

Robert sat down. He felt as if the world, which had been 
so satisfactorily round for the last three days, had suddenly 
gone flat. Buoyed up by the manuscript he was carrying un- 
der his arm, he had been feeling cheerful and even frisky, 
for him — till he came into Miss McGee’s room; now, sud- 
denly, he ceased to feel cheerful and buoyant. He took the 
seat that Miss McGee indicated — his own! — and he sat down 
in it in a crumpled-up manner. 

Miss McGee, if she didn’t know how it felt to be a writer 
of prose, was alive to changes in vitality. “Ye tired, eh,” 
she said affectionately — her tone was that of a kind nurse 
to a child. “Well, never moind. When ye’ve had a bit o’ 
poy ye’ll look at the wor’rld different, me dear.” 

Affection worked its way. Robert forgave Miss McGee for 
her lack of understanding. He thought to himself, “How 
should she know!” — and turned his chair to the table. He 
felt no trace of his former cheerfulness that had approximated 
to effervescence. He continued to feel much as a toy-bal- 
loon must feel after a pin has been stuck into it. But he 
was determinedly cheerful — a dangerous thing to be! — and he 
steered his thoughts on to the direction of food: and felt bet- 
ter. 

“Sure thing that poy is great, eh!” said Miss McGee. She 
was unable to tear her mind from thankfulness at the gift of 
the pie. She cut a great slab and put it on a plate and set 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


171 

the plate before Robert. “That chef is swa’all a’alroight r ” 
she went on conversationally, “an’ I want you to know ut. I 
guess he wears a lot o’ dawg,” she continued confidentially, 
cutting her own piece of pie; “ef you was to see um wa’alkin’ 
out Sundays, ye’d want to be the young girl he says ‘Lady I’ 
to be-lieve me!” 

There was no doubt that Robert must have brought down 
the black dog (not the same kind the chef wore) with him, 
or he must have seen the new moon through glass, or got 
out of bed left foot first, or something dire and irremediable 
must have happened: for he didn’t like the pie! It was a 
good pie all right, as Miss McGee had remarked. Mrs. Glass- 
ridge’s chef knew his business. But the fact of that chef 
having bestowed on Miss McGee three-fourths of a pie, the 
other fourth having presumably been demolished by Mrs. Glass- 
ridge herself in company with “Andrew,” rasped Robert. He 
wasn’t unduly proud. He certainly wasn’t snobbish. Yet 
the fact that he was sitting down to a half-eaten pie, that he 
was supping on the pie-crust that had fallen from the pluto- 
crat’s table, got on his nerves, as Miss McGee was fond of 
saying. He ate a little bit of his slab, and then he listlessly 
dropped his knife and fork, and sat looking more like a sym- 
bol of dejection than a reasonable human being. 

“What’s the matter, eh” said Miss McGee, regarding him 
anxiously, “don’t ye loike the poy?” Her face fell about a 
yard. 

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Robert. “It’s very nice.” 

To say that Miss McGee was disappointed is to say noth- 
ing. When the chef had bestowed the pie on her (in re- 
sponse to some jocose wheedling) she had felt that joyful up- 
lifting of the heart that comes when we know we have some- 
thing worthy to offer those we love. “Sure, I’ll have the tea 
fit for um this toime, bless um,” she had thought: and now 
Robert didn’t like the pie. She felt heart-stricken, and all 
her gladness in her own piece of pie wilted away and died 
a natural death. 

It was at this crisis that Miss McGee showed what she had 
in her. “Don’t ye eat ut ,” she said, “ef it don’t make the ap- 
peal. Put ut to one soide an’ I’ll fry ye an egg.” 

Could anything be more heroic? The flavor of aristocratic 
virtue that Miss McGee sometimes exhaled became extraordi- 
narily evident: it distilled itself into the furthest corners 
of the room. 


172 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Robert stopped looking at the fire. He glanced over at 
Miss McGee. The disappointment that she was quite unable 
to conceal looked out of her blue-black eyes at him. But 
behind the disappointment and promising every moment to 
break through it, as the sun promises to break through threat- 
ening clouds, was the genuine desire that he should be com- 
fortable, the longing to make him as happy as she could. To 
this Robert responded: “I don’t want an egg,” he said, “and 
there was a more affectionate tone in his voice than had ever 
been there before. “I like the pie. It’s all right.” And he cut 
a great piece off the slab Miss McGee had given him and 
put it into his mouth. “Stuff and nonsense,” he said to him- 
self, “what difference would it have made if the pie had been 
whole? It would still have been plutocratic crumbs. Whal 
does it matter. . . . ?” And he went on with his supper. 

One would have thought that Miss McGee would have un- 
derstood Robert’s state of mind: it was not so very unlike 
her own towards Mrs. Garry’s plate of cold turkey. But she 
didn’t understand. And she didn’t because, in spite of all 
protestation, she regarded Mrs. Glassridge in a totally dif- 
ferent way from what Robert did. She said she and Mrs. 
Glassridge were equals; and she based this theory on the facts, 
first that Mrs. Glassridge had been Queenie MacGowan of 
the Barber’s Shop and, second, that she, Miss McGee, might 
have married Tully and Tully might have made good, and in 
that case there would have been no difference at all between 
them. In actual fact there was a difference, and Katie McGee 
knew it. There was a difference of French gowns and toy 
poms and (as Queenie Glassridge said) Louis Sextorze draw- 
ing-rooms and ly-mousines of the best make; Andrew’s dollars 
had digged between the two of them a pit big enough for all 
the unrighteous of this world to fall into. Mrs. Garry mightn’t 
send a plate of turkey because she was Katie’s sister and only 
a beggar on horseback, after all: but Mrs. Glassridge wasn’t 
a beggar on horseback, she was a beggar on camelback — the 
sort of camel that can’t get through a needle’s eye, and that 
made the difference between them and Miss McGee knew 
it — she knew it! — whatever she might say. It was just the 
extra height of the camel that enabled Mrs. Glassridge to 
give half-worn gowns and half-eaten pies with impunity, and 
Katie McGee could accept such with no offense to her dignity, 
and eat and wear them. 

But Robert was different. To him the Mrs. Glassridges 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


173 


of the world were negligible things. He might be amused at 
them — he often did laugh at the stories of Culross that Miss 
McGee brought home, heartily if he were in a good mood, and 
a little bit on the wrong side of his mouth, ironically, if he 
were in a bad one. But when all was said and done he hard- 
ly considered that Mrs. Glassridge existed. Her aspirations 
were not his aspirations, neither were her gods his. He didn’t 
care a snap of his fingers for her poms and her “sextorze” 
drawing-rooms; her ignorant wealth would have got on his 
nerves. He regarded her when he thought of her at all as a 
sort of joke — one of those bad jokes that the modem world is 
fond of playing upon us. He didn’t take her seriously — and 
yet, when it comes to taking favors from the hands of some- 
thing you have a contempt for ! When it comes to being fed, not 
by ravens but by bad jokes . . . ! Katie McGee was pro- 
tected, in a sense, by her very belief in the reality of the 
things she resented and inveighed against and envied, where- 
as Robert’s armor was pierced by his very contempt for them. 
It was as much as he could do to finish his pie at all. And 
when he had finished it, and pushed his plate away from him 
as far as he could, it began at once to give a fit of indiges- 
tion ... as bad jokes do. 

It was not a good beginning to an evening of reading. Rob- 
ert had come down in the mood to read, and eager to be- 
gin. But he was a person whom little puts off, and he felt, 
as he sat looking gloomily over his empty plate and across at 
Miss McGee, as if the sensible thing would be for him to go 
up to bed — and stay there. Miss McGee, too, was disheartened. 
She knew well enough that the pie had not been the suc- 
cess it should have been, and she felt correspondingly depressed. 
However, she never could bear to have so much as an eye- 
lash between her and Robert. When things did go wrong 
her habit was to say to herself, “Sure, it’s your fault, ye lit- 
tle black divil, ye!” and without going quite that length 
on this occasion, she did say, “Sure, it’s put about the bo’oy 
is, eh! He’s toired, the choild.” And she therefore quite 
consciously and determinedly set herself to be nice and to 
abolish the incident. 

Quite suddenly and without the slightest warning she dropped 
her slangy way of speech (that seemed to herself so witty 
and smart) and fell into that other tongue, the one to which 
she had been brought up by “Ma’a.” When she spoke like 
this, as she always did when she spoke of old times, she was 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


174 

far sweeter to Robert. He never could help feeling on such 
occasions that the world had not been kind to Miss McGee; 
that she had been meant to be nicer and far more charming 
than she actually was: and that, had she been shown early 
what was beautiful, she never would have been so struck with 
the young lady posing in the lime light with the peacock’s 
gown stretching behind her in the New York store. The mo- 
ments when Miss McGee was most charming were the mo- 
ments when she was most conscious of her own deficiencies 
and most regretful about life. 

“Regalia’s changed a’alroight, Mr. Fulton,” she said, when 
the subject of the pie had been put away between them. “When 
the first Mrs. Glassridge there was aloive an’ Ma’a’d used to 
go when the babies was bor’m an’ see to the house, there was 
no woild extravagance then.” Miss McGee paused and then 
added, “Be-lieve me!” with conviction. It was an unfortu- 
nate chance that she should have selected any member of the 
Glassridge household to speak of, but the pie was the bridge 
to that: it lay on Miss McGee’s inner consciousness as heav- 
ily as it lay on Robert’s stomach, and she couldn’t quite escape 
from it. 

“Ma’a brought us up good,” Miss McGee resumed after a 
short pause, “an’ she was a good friend to Mrs. Glassridge 
too. Andrew Glassridge there hadn’t made his mooney then. 
He was one plain man, an’ Ma’a was the plain good woman 
I tell you. There wasn’t nothin’ lay between them. There 
was no ly-mousines then.” 

Miss McGee gave a deep sigh, and the stream of her con- 
versation was diverted to “Ma’a.” 

“Sure, I kin see her now,” she said, “makin’ the sign of 
the cross there above us as we laid in our beds, an’ then set- 
tin’ down after her day’s wor’rk — she gawn out cleanin’ Ma’a 
done — to do the sewin’, eh, an’ her bit o’ washin’, bless her. 
Nothin’ was too har’rd fer Ma’a. She kep’ the place good 
an’ she kep’ us good. She was one good woman,” Miss Mc- 
Gee repeated, “an’ whenever I think of her I don’t grudge 
me lonesome loife to-day. I lawst me chanst an’ that’s God’s 
trewth, stayin’ to the end with her. But ef I had to do ut 
over again this day,” Miss McGee said with energy, “I’d stawp 
jes’ the same, God bless her. Every article of ut. An’ ef 
Mitt wouldn’t wait — well, he’d have to do the other thing, 
that’s all — the way he done. . . .” 

As always, when the name of Mitt entered the conversa- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


175 

tion, Miss McGee glanced at Robert: and, as always on such 
occasions, she met a dead wall of a face. It was as if there 
was the mischief in ut, Miss McGee said to herself. Rob- 
ert couldn’t and wouldn’t be persuaded to take an interest in 
Mitt. Why was it? — after a bit Miss McGee heaved a big 
sigh and took up the conversation at a slightly different angle. 

“Well, things is fixed a’alroight, I guess,” she said, “an’ 
God keeps His eye good on every one of us, you bet. But 
ef ’twasn’t fer me religion I’d have a notion some days I’d 
get koind of overlooked.” 

She rose and began to clear the things away. She had put 
the pie incident behind her, but the pie-crust seemed to have 
left a bitter flavor in her mouth. 

“Sure, I got uncle’s mooney a’alroight,” she said, moving 
about in her rapid way; she felt the desire common to all 
humanity to count up its mercies when things are going worst: 
“an’ I want you to understand that was some s’prise to me. 
Me uncle, Mr. Fulton,” she added explanatorily, “was Ma’a’s 
brother, the one she come out to keep house fer, an’ he acted 
bad to Ma’a. He lef’ me the mooney he’d oughter give to 
Ma’a. So I got ut.” 

She paused, and then went on in a pensive voice. 

“My, them trousers Uncle cut was a pattern to all! Me 
uncle was a tailor, Mr. Fulton, an’ an ar’rtist at that. I 
lear’rned a lot in Uncle’s wor’rkroom there. I wisht you could 
’a’ saw them trousers he cut!” She paused and then added 
in a low reverent voice, “I got the overcoat Uncle Michael 
died in now, an’ I’m going’ to let ye see that. Be-lieve me 
when I say it is the best yet. It is the Goods.” 

There was a pause. Through Miss McGee’s mind the 
thought flashed like a fish in a sunny pool that Uncle’s over- 
coat would be a find for Robert. “Took in under the ar’rums 
there,” she said to herself, “an’ fixed some around the hips, 
he’d look the Prince in ut!” She began rapidly to consider 
how she could best induce Robert to accept Uncle’s overcoat. 
She reviewed in her mind several ways of opening the attack. 

“Uncle was a fleshy man,” she said meditatively. She was 
carrying on her thought out loud. “I guess he’d make the 
two of you.” 

Robert was silent because he didn’t quite know what to 
say. Miss McGee’s voice in speaking of the overcoat had 
been so charged with reverence that he couldn’t think of any 
remark good enough to make. He felt as if he were in an 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


176 

artist’s studio, standing (with the artist) before the Exhibi- 
tion Picture, and waiting for inspiration from above. He 
didn’t feel as if Uncle’s fleshiness helped the question. 

“I’ll let ye see ut,” Miss McGee said, after a prolonged 
pause. She had decided to let the offer of the coat slip for the 
moment. “I have ut laid away a’alroight from the mawth. 
When Uncle gawn out” — she meant “died,” of course — “he, 
done the straight thing an’ I want you to know ut. He acted 
mean to Ma’a, but he lef’ Mary an’ me our thousand dawlars 
apiece. Yes, Sir, an’ Andrew Glassridge there took hold an’ 
put the mooney away ” She took the table cloth up and went 
with it in her hands towards the kitchenette. “That’s the 
way,” she said, “I pass fer a lady o’ prawperty here in the 
Buildin’s. I ain’t never told no one but yerself yet the way 
it all come about, nor yet the roights an’ wrongs, nor how 
much the mooney was nor nothin’. But now you know’s 
much as me — an’ I’m glad ye do.” 

She went into the kitchenette and almost shut the door on 
Robert and the conversation generally. She was glad she had 
told Robert, and yet she felt as if she had parted with what 
up to that moment had been a secret: and she felt that sense 
of regret we all feel — momentarily at last — when we part with 
things we can’t get back again. 

“I’m — I’m glad you’ve got something of your own, Miss 
McGee,” Robert said at last, rather awkwardly. He had a 
most unfortunate habit of being unable to rise to emergencies. 
He knew that what he was saying was so banal as to be semi- 
idiotic, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m glad,” he said: and he 
hoped that his voice might atone for the inadequacy of his 
words. It was a great surprise to him to learn that Miss Mc- 
Gee was a lady of prawperty even to the infinitesimal extent 
she was. 

“Yes, I guess ye’re glad a’alroight, Mr. Fulton,” Miss Mc- 
Gee said, out of the kitchenette, quite matter-of-factly. She 
took his good feeling so much for granted that she didn’t feel 
the need of any proof of it. “I guess ye’re glad a’alroight,” she 
said, “or I wouldn’t ’a’ told you.” And then, after a moment- 
ary pause, she added, “Ef I’d had me mooney sooner I guess 
I could have had Mitt with ut.” She came to a dead stop, 
but Robert said nothing; the deep slumbrous indifference that 
seized him at the name of Mitt was once more to the fore. 
“I wisht ye’d had the chanst to be acquainted with Mitt, Mr. 
Fulton, eh,” Miss McGee went on — she felt as if, at long 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


177 

last, she must force Robert to take Mitt in. “Ye’d ’a loiked 
um sure. He was witty a’alroight,” she pursued, her hopes 
growing fainter with every word. “He’d say one thing an’ 
I’d be at um loike a flash. An’ then he’d say somethin’ 
elest — we kep’ the ba’all rollin’. ’Twas the merry-go-round 
when Mitt an’ me got together, be-lieve me.” 

Even Robert felt himself forced to say something. The 
first principles of politeness gave him a jog. He said, “I’m 
sure it must have been,” and when he had said it he was so 
struck with his own idiocy that he had room to be struck 
with nothing more. 

“You an’ him’d been the friends a’alroight,” said Miss 
McGee — heartened even by this. “Ye’d a loiked the one the 
other . . 

She came back from the kitchenette and slipped the white 
table-cloth into the table drawer, and drew out the wonder- 
fully hideous other cover and spread it on the table. 

“Sure there’s somethin’ in the way ye speak, the two of ye,” 
she said wistfully — it was the last supreme effort — “that much 
alike ye moight be brothers. . . 

But Robert was suddenly struck with her deftness in chang- 
ing the cloths. He had often seen her do it before, yet to- 
night, as he sat indolently watching her, it came over him 
how different her swift easy movements were from the clumsy 
ineptness of the wealthy women who came out of their ly- 
mousines to shop at his store. “Why,” he said to himself with 
that keen intellectual pleasure we have when we discover 
something for ourselves, “those women have lost the use of 
their muscles because they never do anything. Of cou*rse,” 
he said to himself, “of course. She’s graceful because she’s al- 
ways busy. Why did I never think of it before!” Out loud 
he said, “I like to watch you, Miss McGee. You do things 
so — so nicely. . . .” 

He began to smile. His irritation against the pie died 
down. This new idea pushed itself into the place where the 
irritation had been, and ousted it. 

“You are neat,” he said. 

Once more Miss McGee blushed. Mitt faded away with- 
out any further effort into the limbo he had created for him- 
self. 

“Won’t ye — won’t ye read yer book?” Miss McGee asked. 
She felt an irresistible desire to please Robert, and instinct 
told her how to do it. “Say*, git a move on there an’ read,” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


178 

she said in her coaxing voice. “I’d jes’ love to hear a piece 
to-noight.” 

Robert sprang up and went towards the window-sill. 

“You won’t be bored?” he said eagerly. “You’re sure I 
don’t bore you — do I?” Some of the effervescence of the 
earlier evening fluffed up in him. 

“Bored!” said Mss McGee. “Say, what d’ye take me fer, 
eh? I jes’ love the book. I adore ut. I think it’s i-deal.” 

She watched him coming back to the table with the manu- 
script in his hand. 

“Wait jes’ a minnut,” she said, “till I git me work.” 

She took her piece of sewing in her hands and composed 
herself as audience. She felt as if she could sit till the Crack 
of Doom listening to Robert’s book and not understanding one 
word of it. The pie was a completely back number for both 
of them. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

T HE pie was a back number, yet it had existed. And 
when things exist they have a way of going on existing 
when we think they are dead. The evil that the pie 
had done lived after it even when the pie itself was only a 
source of indigestion. 

It might be that this section cn Robert’s book, which he 
had taken great pains over for the last three nights, was slight- 
ly more aristocratic even than usual because he had been listen- 
ing to the Po-ut. The Po-ut was no aristocrat of the titled sort, 
but he was an aristocrat of the intellectual sort. He escaped 
being an intellectual snob — just: an intellectual aristocrat he 
was. Robert perhaps fell under his spell because of this. Rob- 
ert’s besetting sin in life was fastidiousness. He was fasti- 
dious mentally, morally, intellectually — every possible way in 
which it is possible to be fastidious: and his attitude to Pene- 
lope’s Buildings — the impossibility he felt in accepting even 
the better parts of them, was owing to this. 

All unknown to himself, totally unconsciously, as he was 
writing this third section of his book, he was more fastidious 
than ever. He was still under the Po-ut’s spell; he was far 
away from the very sordid actualities of life amongst which 
he found himself. He was away in that Palace of Unreality 
which the Po-ut had built (and which the old gentleman had 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


179 


knocked down) and from that vantage-ground he was con- 
sidering the world. To an even greater extent than usual he 
was therefore distant from the world, and his view of it was 
— remote. 

Yet he said some very good things in this third section of 
his. His facts were all right — he was an accurate person: 
what was wrong was his envisagement of these facts. He 
surveyed democratic facts from the aristocratic standpoint; he 
undertook to explain “the people” when he didn’t know how 
they felt. But, if you gave him the premises he set out with, 
he exploited them very well. 

‘In Canada,’ said he, ‘you begin to comprehend what it 
was that Morris meant when he spoke of “leisure to grow” 
There is little enough of that precious commodity in Eng- 
land nowadays, but in the Dominion there is a good deal less. 
The Canadian has no time for the spiritual refinements of life 
and therefore he has no time to consider how you may be 
feeling and to adapt himself politely to your immediate de- 
sires. It is this want of leisure, I fancy, that accounts for a 
certain callousness that is characteristic of him.’ Very true. 
Undeniable. But how about Robert Fulton adapting himself 
to the Canadian’s hustle? That sort of criticism works two 
ways — probably any sort of criticism does — and Robert was 
most assuredly not taking time to consider how the Canadian 
might be feeling. Yet he said what he had to say neatly, 
for all that. He went on, ‘There is nothing bad in the 
people who are thus imperceptive. It is simply that the more 
imaginative attitude towards life presupposes time for growth. 
Friendship, good workmanship, beautiful manners, all these 
things require a certain deliberateness to develop properly. 
Leisure to grow is to the mind what good air is to the body; 
and mental life is deformed no less surely than the physical 
body when such elementary needs are denied.’ 

Nobody could say this wasn’t true. The only thing was 
it might have been said another way . . . but then it wouldn’t 
have been Robert Fulton. 

Having cleared his mind of these remarks, Robert returned 
to the immigrant. In his previous sections he had shown that 
Canada was made up of immigrants, and he had divided these 
immigrants into classes — academicals (who come out to “teach” 
the Dominion), penniless aristocrats (who come to see if there is 
a good time to be made out of it), clerks and stenographers (who 
come frankly for what they can get), and, lastly, the actual hand 


i8o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


workers themselves, from whom the Dominion almost entirely 
springs. Miss McGee had had to stand hearing Canada “vili- 
fied” as she called it; and now she had to sit and hear how she 
and her like come out to Canada, what it is they come from, 
and why it is they make of Canada such an unsatisfactory 
country. 

During the reading of the first two sections of the Canada 
Book — and perhaps even more in thinking over them after- 
wards — Miss McGee had been conscious of a vague distress. 
She had had a sense of incompleteness and longing and gen- 
eral emotion borne in upon her, which she could no more 
have explained than any of us can explain what we feel when 
we hear a distant strain of music or when the first spring-song 
of a bird strikes upon our ear. Sometimes as Miss McGee was 
on her way to work a note or two from some wheezy hand- 
organ would come to her, borne faintly on the wind; and 
then, if she was at all “peeved” with life, as she put it, 
if things had gone wrong and she felt she was old and of 
no use in the world, these notes would make their way right 
into her heart, and there, in some mysterious way, they would 
cause trouble and sadness. The first two sections of the Canada 
Book had been notes from the hand-organ. They had got into 
Miss McGee’s heart and they had caused trouble and sadness 
there — yes, and they had caused tumult too. In vain Miss 
McGee had blamed herself. “Sure an’ it’s not jealous an’ 
envious ye are, ye little black divil ?” she had said to herself. 
“ ’Tis not of sin an’ badness altogether ye’re made up of, 
are ye?” And she would push back the personal sadness 
that she felt, the tumult in her that said “it ain’t loike that I” 
and try to merge these uncomfortable feelings in the pride she 
felt in Robert’s “cleverness, bless um!” and the joy she had 
in her certainty that, sooner or later, this masterpiece of his 
would be hailed by the world and he would become a sort 
of hero . . . and she, by reason of her intuitive recognition 
of his greatness and her pride in it, would take her rightful 
place by his side. When she looked forward she always saw 
herself, in her imagination, in this place by his side. She said 
to herself, “We’ll be the friends, us two, eh!” And, since she 
did not feel, either in her head or heart, the certainty she 
would have liked to feel that they always would be the friends, 
she said it with the greater energy. 

This time, while she was listening to the third section of 
the book, she felt more than vague sadness or passing irrita- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


181 


tion; she felt acute distress. If, as usual, she did not entirely 
understand what Robert had to say — if, for instance, his re- 
marks on leisure (she wasn’t very sure what that was) passed 
over her head — still there was one thing she did and could 
understand: the tone of what she listened to. And that was 
what distressed her. 

She sat with her work in her hands, rapidly moving her needle 
in and out. The work with her hands was purely mechanical, 
she didn’t need to think about it; and as she listened with an 
almost painful anxiety to know what it was all about — for once 
this evening already she had felt far from her friend and she 
didn’t want to go through this experience again ... so soon — 
she seemed suddenly to detect what hurt her. It was the dis- 
tance Robert put between himself and her. It wasn’t only 
the grand words he used; it wasn’t the technicality of his style — 
it was something else. Robert, as he read what he had been at 
so much pains to get down, was deliberately, as it seemed to 
Katie McGee, saying to her, “You are of different flesh and 
bone from me. Keep your distance.” 

Nothing perhaps in the world could have cut Robert so 
painfully as to be told of this. He did consider with every- 
thing that was in him that he was putting the workers’ case 
as they never could put it for themselves . . . and of course 
he didn’t see that just there was the trouble. In his Paper, 
all through it, inherent in its very conception and long before its 
birth, was the difference between himself and the manual worker. 
This had been evident enough in the last section when he had 
been parceling out the inhabitants of Canada into four separate 
packets — like seeds you plant in the ground with labels on the 
little wooden sticks beside them. He had written labels in his 
neat handwriting — labels that Miss McGee with her impetuous 
mind had snatched off and thrown to the winds. He had got 
Canada ready for the worker — and now the worker was coming 
on, labeled too . . . Miss McGee felt she could not bear it. And 
Robert, reading away in the most industrious way and feeling 
here and there that he had put a finger on the spot, was ut- 
terly and entirely unaware of her feelings. He hadn’t be- 
lieved her when she had said she “adored” his book. He 
knew, in a sort of way, that she was only “being nice.” Yet 
in another way he had believed her. How was he to know 
that the more enthusiastic a woman’s tone is the less she means, 
and the more intelligently she listens the less she has any 
idea what it is all about. He was an “innocent man” in 


182 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


many ways. He didn’t know much — outside of Greek and 
Latin and things like that. He hadn’t the slightest idea that 
class wrote his essay and showed in every line of it. He would 
have been miserable if he had known it. He had almost every- 
thing to learn. . . . 

As he read Miss McGee gradually disassociated her mind 
from the actual pages and allowed her thought to trail back 
into the past. She had been talking of “old times” before 
Robert had begun to read: Ag’s engagement had somehow 
thrown her mind back into what was past and gone, and once 
more she saw Ag’s mother engaged — fair flaxen Mary McGee 
engaged to big Tim Garry that she didn’t care for, and Ma’a 
standing quietly over the two of them and approving the 
match. What a queer thing life was! Ma’a had been the 
good woman — and what had she got out of life? Miss McGee 
had never heard Ma’a grumble. Old Mrs. McGee had taken 
life as it came, done her day’s darg, and expected nothing more. 
“She’d oughter’ve had more,” her daughter now said rebel- 
liously. She felt that her mother, quiet in her grave, hadn’t 
had her chance. She thought of all the old past-and-gone 
festivities, when she, Katie, had been but a slip of a girl with 
eyes that caught men and held them fast. “Sure, ’twas sweet 
Ma’a’d used to look a Christmas noight!” she thought. She 
saw her pretty mother in the red gown she always wore for 
best, with the little white collar and cuffs, and she saw those 
capable motherly hands arranging the mistletoe on the Christmas 
table — and the pink candles she had always lighted then. 
And once more she sat through the Christmas dinner with her 
mother and Mary — and Tim later, and later still “the kids”; 
and Old Nancy too, her mother’s friend, she that was mother 
to Danny Finn that married Mrs. Morphy’s youngest daughter, 
she , too, was there till the year of her death. That Christmas 
dinner — half jollity, half sacramental feast! Miss McGee’s 
eyes filled with tears as she thought of her mother’s goodness — 
her simple attitude towards life. “My, my,” she said to herself, 
“her was the good woman, God help me.” 

‘The Canadian immigrant,’ read Robert, ‘brings with him 
the blank dumfoundering lack of interest in things artistic 
which he so successfully cultivated in England . . .’ 

“Sure,” Miss McGee said to herself, waking up to what 
Robert was saying and disassociating herself with a wrench 
from the past, “ain’t we folks!” She suddenly felt defiant. 

Robert of course might have abused Canada as he would if 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 183 

only he would have done it differently. Had he “hit out” 
with a strong accentuated transitory sort of dislike, Katie Mc- 
Gee would have been with him every time. She would have 
said, with the deepest fellow-feeling in her voice, “Sure it’s 
roight ye are! Canada’s mud, ain’t ut, Mr. Fulton.” She 
would have felt entirely, exaggeratedly, purely Irish. “Ire- 
land’s It!” And when they had both said their say and Canada 
had been sufficiently pelted with mud, she would have turned 
round — or back — and cherished Canada as her foster-country to 
her breast. “It’s the foine toimes we has in Canada, eh,” she 
would have said then. “It’s the chanst we gits here.” What 
hurt Miss McGee and what hurt her even after Robert had 
finished reading, was the sense he gave her that he was cut 
off from her by an ocean of class — that he belonged to a differ- 
ent world from the McGees as surely as if he had descended 
from the planet Mars and was shortly going home again by a 
special yet-to-be-discovered martiaplane. She felt with a sink- 
ing of the heart when he said ‘there is of course nothing bad in 
the people who are thus imperceptive’ that she had neither part 
nor lot in him, that he was different from her, root and branch, 
that she never would or could be the smallest part of him, that 
she was a fool — oh, what a fool! — even to think of him or to 
wish to be friends, yes, even to sit beside him as she had been 
sitting listening to what he had to read to her. “What roight 
have I,” she said to herself bitterly, “to be takin’ par’rt with 
such as him! He’s as far above me as the starloight. He’s 
not loike me. He’s a gen’leman bor’rn.” A vision of an old- 
time long-past party came up before her eyes with Old Nancy, 
her mother’s good friend, dancing an Irish jig, and her old 
feet neatly twinkling in and out of her skirts. “ ’Twas the 
properest jig ever ye saw,” Miss McGee said bitterly to her- 
self. “Her” — she meant Old Mrs. McGee — “would never ’a’ 
stood for anythin’ unproper, bless her.” And she thought how 
she had enjoyed the party, and how Tim Donough’s eyes had 
followed her round the room and told her what kind of girl 
she was — she saw again the circle round Old Nancy applaud- 
ing and crying “Brayvo!” and old Mrs. McGee clapping her 
hands the loudest of all. And she thought, “He wouldn’t 
a cared fer ut. We’re not fer him. God help um, he hates 
us. . . She choked back the hot tears she felt coming into 
her eyes and pushed back her thoughts — beyond the thinking- 
point. 

“Now I’ll listen ” she said; and she sat, letting Robert’s 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


184 

paper go in at her ears and surge about in her head while, quite 
mechanically, she went on sticking her needle into her work and 
taking it out again. Robert said plenty of kind things about 
the workers too. He meant thoroughly well when he said ‘They 
have been held down for generations — when at last the feast 
is spread to their hands, is it not natural that they should 
over-eat?’ But the very fact that he said ‘they,’ that he 
always alluded to the workers as something apart — far away — 
not to be seen almost without a telescope held to the human 
eye — it was this that grieved Miss McGee — this that kept 
the tears pushing upward and upward for all she could do to 
keep them down. “What does he mane” she said to herself 
as she listened to him saying ‘being simple folks and coming 
from the class they do’ — what class? Why was it such a 
long way away? Weren’t they flesh and blood too? Wouldn’t 
a knife cut them? But it was when Robert, at the end of all 
his summings-up and castings-down, said ‘it is this, I think, 
that makes Canada or any other New Land so extremely in- 
teresting,’ that Miss McGee, as she herself expressed it, went 
entirely off the handle. Why should Canada be treated as 
if it were a moth in the hands of a boy who was about to 
stick a pin through its thorax? She felt a sort of choking 
as if the boy’s hands — excellent careful Student’s hands — were 
already on Canada’s thorax — and since she had suddenly be- 
come, for good and all as she thought, a piece of the Dominion, 
on her -thorax too. “My Gawd,” she said to herself, “ain’t we 
aloive!” And for a moment, yes for a moment, Robert as 
it was, she felt a wave of hot indignation surge from somewhere 
deep down in her and come flooding up right over her affection. 
Canada was the land her mother had come out to so long 
ago; come out to from the farm that she could no longer make 
pay. Canada was the land that had offered the McGees refuge 
— Mrs. McGee had come, bringing her children . . . Miss 
McGee could just remember faintly the smell of the ship in her 
baby nostrils . . . and there, in Canada the despised, the 
‘interesting’ place, Katie and Mary McGee and their brave 
good mother had found a home. Yes, a home. What fault 
was there in Tim Garry’s working his way so Mary had her 
gramophone and her fur set with the best of ’em? Why 
shouldn’t the workers work themselves up, in God’s name, 
and have their clothes and their fine homes with the rest? 
With a great surge Miss McGee felt herself go to the side of 
the sister she hadn’t spoken to for years. She was her sister — 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


185 

blood of her blood — class of her class: who was this stranger 
here in her room, reading to her in his cultivated voice, call- 
ing her fosterland ‘interesting!’ Miss McGee felt hot and 
she felt a burning pain in her breast; and then, suddenly, the 
tide turned. This was her boy, her dear, the man whom her 
soul went out to — whom her withering body would fain mother 
and love. She forgave him. She began, before she entirely 
realized how angry with him she was, to make excuses. “Bless 
um, how should he know!” “He’s the gen’leman bor’rn, you 
bet!” “He don’t know how the workers feels — he thinks, the 
bo’oy, we’re the different make to him ... an’ he’s roight. 
Yes, he’s roight,” Miss McGee said to herself. “I’m different 
to him. What do I know? What do I understand? I’ve no 
education — I don’t know roight from wrong. If Nellie was 
here,” she thought with a passionate desire for someone of 
her own who could “talk to” Robert — “show him.” “If Nellie 
was here,” Miss McGee thought, “she'd fix um.” And with 
the thought that her niece anyway had had the education that 
she herself so vainly longed to have had a smile came on her 
face — a sad smile — and she sat looking palely at Robert, wait- 
ing for him to be finished. 

It was during Robert’s last paragraph that all these violent 
feelings had surged through her ; it was about the middle of it — 
so miraculously rapid are the processes of feeling — that she had 
settled down to resignation. The sentence that had made her so 
angry had been the prelude to Robert’s summing-up. ‘It is 
largely this,’ he had said, ‘that makes Canada or any other 
New Land so extremely interesting. It is the opportunity of 
watching how the workers will develop, once the restraining 
influences of the Old Country are withdrawn. My own im- 
pression is that they will develop everywhere — even in England 
itself before so very long — as they develop out here, and that 
a period of personal ambition and self-assertion is before them. 
They have long since emerged, or rather been violently ejected, 
from the old state of contentment and submission to authority: 
they have taken the first step on the path to the realization of 
self, and that path leads inevitably through egoism and acquisi- 
tiveness and confusion. Thus, however unsatisfactory the effect 
of Canada upon these immigrants may appear at first sight, 
there is always this element of hopefulness about.it, that it may 
prove to be only a stage on the way to something ever so 
much better. And even as it is, it undoubtedly has some imme- 
diately tangible compensations, as I shall now attempt to show.’ 


i86 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


He looked up. There was a modest complacency on his 
face. He felt it was not altogether too bad. 

“Sure it’s a grand thing,” Miss McGee said after a silence — 
her criticism always resolved itself into that. “It’s great, 
an’ I’m the proud woman to be hearin’ ut all. Thank ye, 
Mr. Fulton.” 

And when Robert, poor soul, looked at his watch and de- 
cided reluctantly that it was too late to begin Section IV — 
she said she was “sawry.” “I’ll come down to-morrow night, 
Miss McGee,” he said eagerly, if it’s convenient — it’s Sunday, 
you know — and read you the rest. There isn’t much. It 
won’t take long. It — it won’t tire you ... ?” 

And, after he had left her, he said to himself, “It can’t be 
quite bad. It roused her.” And, for the very first time, the 
thought came to him that deliverance might lie the way the por- 
cupine-quill pen pointed. “Could I buy myself out of the 
Meat Market with this ?” he began to say to himself that night. 
And his writing began to take on a new complexion. 

“She liked it,” he said to himself again as he was getting 
into bed. The odd look Miss McGee had had in her eyes 
when he had said it was too late to begin Section IV followed 
him into a dream. 


CHAPTER XXVII 



1HE whole of Sunday Miss McGee spent preparing to 


hear Section IV. She knew she was in for a bad time, 


and with the fighting blood of the McGees in her 
veins she was preparing to meet it. “Sure I don’t care,” she 
said to herself with the energy that means, “I do care very 
much.” “I don’t care. He kin read all he darn well pleases an’ 
I’ll set an’ listen to um. ’Tis a fool-stunt anyways ye take 
ut, an’ I’ll take moine standin’ up.” With these reflections 
Miss McGee slipped over her nightgown several woolly spencers 
of varying ages, and one big coat of a respectable antiquity, 
and went over to St. Patrick’s to interview God. 

The little Low Mass calmed her. She felt better when she 
turned to come out of church again, and more as if she could 
bear to hear a small piece more of the Canada Book in the 
evening hours. “I’ll fix the poy,” she had said to herself 
as her beads slipped through her fingers, “the way he won’t 
know ut fer a poy, an’ then I guess he’ll retush ut good.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 187 

She pondered this matter in the quiet of the church, and when 
she came out into the world with the pie-riddle solved in her 
mind, she felt soothed and comforted. “I guess I’ll pick 
awf the crust,” she thought to herself with the utter unscrupu- 
lousness of woman, “an’ I’ll fix over the meat in a kind of a 
little hash . . . an’ I guess he’ll make a meal awf of that 
a’alroight.” On the church steps she saw going down before 
her her old teacher at the convent school, Mother Bridget, and 
that cheered her up further. “Wait, Mother,” she cried, run- 
ning up to her as if she was the old Kitty McGee of the school 
days, “sure, wait on me. Good mornin’. ’Tis the treat to 
see ye.” And she slipped her hand under the old nun’s 
arm and helped her down the slippery steps. “I’m a powny 
kickin’ up its heels in the field,” she said when they were 
safe on the side-walk, capering a little, and showing her white 
stockings under the nightgown. And she enjoyed the scandalized 
eyes of the younger nun, watching, waiting to take her turn at 
helping Mother Bridget home. “Sure ’tis Kitty McGee of 
the old school, Mother,” Miss McGee said, capering a little 
more. And somehow the “Eh, ye bad gir’rl, Katie McGee!” of 
the old nun calmed her further. She liked the touch of Mother 
Bridget’s wrinkled old hands, and the gentle Irish voice that 
said, “Good mornin’, Katie, God bless ye, me dear.” She 
went on her way across Drayton Place comforted, feeling that 
this world is not such a bad place after all; and on the way 
upstairs to her own room she had a slight brush with Mrs. 
Savourin (the aroma of whose words about “mother” had long 
since passed away) as to the conduct of some “young ladies” 
to whom the flat opposite Miss McGee had been let — and this 
revived her still further. “Them gir’rls is punk” said Miss 
McGee to Mrs. Savourin as they stood together on the landing 
outside Miss McGee’s apartment, “an’ ye’re one of the same 
koind yerself an’ ’tis toime ye should know ut.” To this 
Mrs. Savourin had replied with at least equal vivacity, and 
Miss McGee had responded with “Ye’ll stawp awf rentin’ them 
rooms to young ladies as has young gen’lemen cornin’ in to ’em 
at any hour of the noight an’ a decent woman lyin’ awake 
through the wall with the shame of hearin’ ’em, or I’ll git you 
fired” After a short time the discussion had developed into 
something like a free fight with tongues. No one could beat 
Miss McGee in agility of that unruly member. She knew the 
language of the slums to the very core — how should she not 
who had heard it about her all her life? — and when she fought 


i88 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


with the Mrs. Savourins of her acquaintance she used their 
weapons. If Mrs. Savourin had not Miss McGee’s acrobatic 
genius of the tongue she had an even viler vocabulary: as 
thqse two stood on the landing unloading their minds, the 
mists of convention were dispelled. It was like hauling up 
truth in pailfuls from the bottom of the well — and finding it 
mud. ... 

“I’ll git her foired, the god-damned punk of her,” said Miss 
McGee furiously to herself as she went into her own apart- 
ment at last and banged the door behind her. And as her 
thoughts reverted to the “has-beens” next door she further 
said, “What did I say . . . !” (she was now harking back to 
the dope-men period) “an’ what would Ma’a say, God help 
me. . . .” 

She took her tea-pot out of its protecting shawl and sat 
down to breakfast. “Sure, my,” she said to herself, pour- 
ing out her cup of tea, “what would Ma’a say ef she knew 
her little Katie was cheek-be-jowl with street- walkers an’ 
punk.” 

The repetition of this pleasant word cheered Miss McGee. 
She said it over to herself once or twice with increasing em- 
phasis, and then she settled to her cup of tea and the novel! 
she had, rather surreptitiously (another effect of the Canada 
Book on Miss McGee’s mind), fetched home from the “cir- 
culator” of the Departmental Store. “ ’Tain’t what I should be 
readin’, I guess,” she said to herself with a sigh, “but it’s koind 
of restful too.” And she read about the Duke of Denbigh 
with a feeling of thankfulness that she could understand him 
and that he, at least, said nothing — hurting, as poor Robert’s 
pages did. Now and again Miss McGee looked up from 
her book to pour herself another cup of tea. “Push my face 
in, eh,” she said to herself, reverting to one of the flowers 
of Mrs. Savourin’s . speech, “I guess there’s two to that.” She 
felt on the whole lightened and encouraged by the Savourin 
fray. A word-fight now and then did her good — it worked 
off some of the exasperation with life that accumulated in 
her heart; and at the present moment, with Section III just 
behind her and Section IV immediately to come, she felt as if 
she must work off something on someone. There was a lot 
to work off; but the Mass and the complete peace of the 
church, the friendly meeting with old Mother Bridget, and, 
lastly, the absolute row with no pretense about it on the stair- 
head with Mrs. Savourin, had done her good. She was able 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


189 

to enjoy her breakfast. She thoroughly liked her book. It 
was, for the moment, as if she had poured away her grievance — 
as if she were in the midst of a tiny entr’acte in the dis- 
agreeables of life. 

As for “firing” Mrs. Savourin, Miss McGee knew well 
enough that that could not be done. The Janitress’s occupancy 
of her flat dated back eleven years; she had come to “The 
Buildings” as the inhabitants always called them, immediately 
after Miss McGee’s own return from New York, after old 
Mrs. McGee’s death. Everything had been respectable 
enough then; the flats had been freshly remodeled from the 
block of separate houses they had originally been. Miss Mc- 
Gee had seen the Buildings pass out of the hands of their 
original owner; she had seen them in the hands of the second 
owner — the French-Canadian: she had seen his passing, and 
the coming of the third owner, the Jew: and finally, she had 
seen the Buildings go “in the Law” — and “in the Law” 
she well knew they were likely to remain. She also 
knew that while the Law extended its claws over the 
Buildings, for just so long nothing could be changed in them. 
Just as a door-handle could not be taken off and replaced 
with a new one, so Mrs. Savourin could not be ejected and 
replaced with a new Mrs. Savourin. And therefore, her remarks 
had been so much smoke ... to point the fact that there 
was a fire. The really peculiar part of the whole business 
was that, had Mrs. Savourin been going to run away from 
her post and leave the Buildings without a Jani tress at all, 
Miss McGee, informed of her intention, would have been the 
first to contribute to the utmost of her powers to a testimonial 
of regret. Miss McGee disapproved of Mrs. Savourin in the 
same way that she disapproved of certain parts of the Canadian 
climate; and in the same way that she took twenty degrees 
below as a gift of God, she took Mrs. Savourin. Had there 
been any project afoot for giving Mrs. Savourin an imitation 
leather “grip-sac,” or an imitation diamond pin, or a comb 
that looked like tortoise-shell and was something quite differ- 
ent, Miss McGee would have headed the vanguard and pre- 
sented the gift with a speech of amenity. Miss McGee, in 
fact, had her own code of morality and politeness, and, so 
far as lay in her, she acted up to it. 

After breakfast Miss McGee did the bit of washing she 
had put to soak after Robert left her the night before. Then 
she cleaned her room — the cinders had been sifted before 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


190 

she went to church: and then she ran over to Mrs. Morphy’s 
to dress her leg — and then she would come back and get ready 
for church again and Rose, and surely Ag this time, would 
come in their best Sunday clothes to fetch her. And she would 
feel proud of her kin. 

“Mac’s awf,” said Mrs. Morphy, as Miss McGee was kneel- 
ing before her, dressing the leg. “He’s awf, the poor bo’oy, 
to make good in the States. Rose won’t look at um, the fool- 
gir’rl of her, an’ I say ’tis a shame. She’d oughter be spanked, 
tur’rnin’ um down the way she done. Why won’t she have 
um, McGee? ’Tis the goods a’alroight he is, an’ she won’t 
git a better man to the name of her ef she waits her loife.” 

“I guess Rose Garry don’t need to look at any fella twoice 
ef she don’t feel the ca’all,” Miss McGee said haughtily. 
“Me niece Rose is workin’, Mrs. Morphy. She kin pick an’ 
choose the way she feels, I guess.” Miss McGee did not 
feel like this. She regretted as no one else could Rose’s treat- 
ment of Mac. But all the same Rose Garry was her niece 
and she wasn’t going to give her away. “Sure we all has to 
live the way we feel,” she went on in the same quite distant 
tone, and concentrating her attention on the bandage she was 
putting on, “ef we don’t feel loike ut, we don’t have to 
clutter us up with no man-truck at all, I guess.” 

She went on unrolling her bandage carefully. 

“Oh, psha!” Mrs. Morphy cried. “You make me toired. Rose 
Garry’s the same’s any other gir’rl, I guess. She wants a 
home an’ a man an’ kiddies cornin’. Don’t be tellin’ me , 
McGee. ’Tis the day’ll come yet when Rose Garry there’ll 
be cryin’ out the eyes of her she sent Mac awf. An’ he’s awf, 
I want you to know,” Mrs. Morphy continued. “He’s awf . 
‘Old lady,’ he says to me, ‘it ain’t no good. I can’t git sinse 
out of her an’ I mean to quit. She’ll have her religion to 
comfor’rt her,’ he says.” Mrs. Morphy paused ere she sent 
her shaft home. “Mac ain’t goin’ to wait fer ever,” she said 
after the pause, with a good deal of emphasis. “Take ut 
from me, McGee, Mac’ll marry. He’s a clean fella an’ he’s 
what the gir’rls loike. Mac ain’t goin’ to wait all his loife 
fer Rose,” Mrs. Morphy went on after another short pause, 
sending another shaft home. “He’ll git a gir’rl a’alroight, 
don’t worry!” 

“I should worry,” Miss McGee returned, bending over the 
poor piteous leg. But for all that she did worry. “Ain’t she 
the limutt, the big darn-fool,” was what she said to herself. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


191 

Out loud she remarked, “I guess Rose Garry’ll git all the 
awfers she wants. She’ll marry when she feels loike ut, be- 
lieve me. Mac kin go all he wants to fer her.” And then, 
with a slight change of tone, she said, “I guess that leg o’ 
yours’ll feel more comf’table now it’s fixed fer the day eh?” 
And that changed the current of Mrs. Morphy’s remarks to 
gratitude. 

When Miss McGee left Mrs. Morphy her mind kept weaving 
about the conversation they had just had. She fully agreed 
with the “old lady.” Mac would marry in the States, where 
he was going. He would see some girl — and she would “take” 
him: and he would want her, and there was no other way of 
getting her but by marriage — he would put Rose out of his 
head. Miss McGee agreed absolutely with Mrs. Morphy. 
Mac would git a gir’rl a’alroight. 

When Rose came she was resolutely silent. No mention of 
Mac escaped her lips, neither did she seem to wish to talk 
of Ag’s engagement. “Yes, Ed was a good boy.” That about 
began and ended that matter. And Ag herself was once more 
invisible. She had gone with Ed to Ed’s church, the great 
church of St. Francis Xavier — and there was no fault to be 
found with that. Rose seemed not in the best of spirits, but 
she said nothing about it. She went to Mass with “Auntie,” 
and came away again. “Oh say, my,” Auntie said to herself, 
“that Rose is one good gir’rl a’alroight, but I guess she is one 
fool!” With the greatest joy in the world she could have 
acted on Mrs. Morphy’s suggestion and turned to and “spanked” 
Rose with a will. 

This time they didn’t meet Mac sauntering on the side- 
walk in a degage manner with the thermometer below freezing- 
point and a semi-ready suit on. There was no deprecating 
solid Scotch accent saying it had just happened to be out and 
had thought it would come there — “Good mornin’, Miss 
Rose.” 

When Robert came in the evening, Miss McGee was de- 
pressed. She felt deeply and darkly and most unbeautifully 
blue: and the sight of Robert’s slim little roll of papers on the 
sill didn’t make her any better. “Some more tomfoolery, eh,” 
was what she would have said, had Robert been someone else. 
As it was she gave a big sigh and she said to herself, “Oh, 
well, it has to be, I s’pose. So we may’s well stick ut the 
best way we know how.” The thought did pass through her 
mind how nice it would be if Robert would just take up the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


192 

novel where she had left it off and see if the Duke of Denbigh 
did seduce that girl. . . . 

“Miss McGee,” said Robert as he was eating with the 
completest enjoyment of ignorance — he had no conception it 
was the offending article — the reincarnated pie, “why do you 
spell your name the way you do? Oughtn’t it to be ‘McGhee’?” 
He had meant for a long time back to ask Miss McGee this, 
but it had always slipped out of his mind at the right times 
and in again at the wrong. “M-c-G-h-e-e,” he said, spelling 
it letter by letter. 

“M-c-G-h-e-e,” said Miss McGee, also slowly spelling it. 
“Why, how did ye know, Mr. Fulton, eh?” 

She looked at him with brightening eyes. She liked him to 
be clever — and if this wasn’t clever, what was! — and she was 
interested too, always, in any reference to the name McGee, 
which she loved and was proud of. 

“Oh, well,” Robert said, smiling at her, “that’s the way they 
spell it in Ireland, isn’t it? ‘McGee’ ought to be pronounced 
‘Me Gee* you know,” — and he made the sound the driver makes 
when he hurries his horse. 

“So ’twa’as ‘McGhee’ when first we come out,” Miss Mc- 
Gee said, “but sure the folks here knows nothin’.” Her 
voice was contemptuous — she was purely Irish now. “So they’d 
used to koind o’ la’aff,” she continued, “when Ma’a’d git after 
’em an’ spell ut out. ‘Say, why don’t ye git in the other 
letters of the alphabit,’ they’d say, and fool-ta’alk loike that. 
An’ so at the finish Ma’a gits koind o’ mad an’ says she, 
‘Have ut the way ye loike an’ bad luck to ye,’ she says. ‘Fix 
ut wrong an’ be happy.’ She ca’alled ut awf roight there, Mr. 
Fulton, if you'll be-lieve me, an’ ’tis M-c-G-e-e ’t has been 
ever sinst.” 

Miss McGee paused a moment and then repeated with a 
slightly accentuated contempt, “My, sure ’tis nothin’ at all 
they don’t know out here, eh! ’Tis the poor place Canada 
when ye think of Ireland.” 

She felt extraordinarily comforted by this small conversa- 
tion. She felt, as she would have put it, all made over by 
Robert’s remarks. She had hardly ever before felt so in- 
tensely and exclusively Irish as she did at the moment; she 
felt so Irish that she was able to see even England’s point 
of view and make excuses for it. “Bless um,” she thought, 
“he thinks there’s other places as good’s Ireland — an’ I guess 
he’s roight!” Out loud she said, “Say, what have ye brought 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


193 

to read this noight?” And then she went on, without the 
slightest idea that she was not stating what was exactly the fact, 
“I been countin’ up all the day long. When I woke up in 
the mor’min’ says I to meself, ‘Sure Katie McGee, there’s one 
thing in the front of ye an’ that’s a treat!’ So star’rt roight 
in, Mr. Fulton, eh, an’ git a move on — quick. I’ll git the 
dishes in the kitchenette an’ then I’ll set as dumb as a bat 
drinkin’ in all ye brought to tell me. . . 

She got up and bustled about, and Robert felt cheered and 
inspirited at the very sight of her. 

When she sat down to the cleared table and looked at the 
outspread pages to which she was to listen, she felt as happy 
as if never a pin’s-worth of patronage to Canada and the 
workers had ever come between them. She felt even more 
than happy; she felt hilarious. “Oh, bless um,” she thought, 
“ef he ain’t got the stick all good an’ ready fer Canada, 
eh!” As she sat looking at him with her sparkling eyes, 
she felt not Canadian at all. She felt European, cosmopolitan, a 
citizeness of the world — and, above all, of Ireland. She thought 
of the old farm behind her that her mother had so loved to 
talk about and she thought, “Sure, I belong there!” And she 
thought of the big Departmental Store in New York where 
the young lady had posed and she thought, “An’ I been 
there!” Regalia seemed indeed a poor paltry insignificant 
place. Canada hardly seemed worth taking into the question. 
“Foire away, Mr. Fulton, eh,” she said, “we’ll have the 
evenin’ of ut sure.” 

And, in this enlivening atmosphere, Robert began to read. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

R OBERT’S Section IV began well. It said, ‘In making the 
change from one country to another these immigrants leap, 
so to say, from the first stage into the second. That is 
what makes them such interesting and even, in a sense, 
romantic figures.’ 

Now this was quite a different thing from summing up a 
great many (mostly derogatory) facts and saying at the end, 
‘This is what makes Canada so extremely interesting.’ We 
would all object to hearing ourselves brought down to that; 
but none of us would object to being called ‘romantic,’ and 


194 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


elevated to being, in that sense, ‘interesting.’ Miss McGee felt 
like that. When she had lamented, walking home from the 
Frejus Mansions, that she was not suitable for a heroine of 
romance, it had been just that quality Robert was indicating 
that she had thought absent. The Duke of Denbigh in her 
novel was ‘romantic.’ Now it appeared she and her fellow- 
immigrants were romantic. She composed herself to listen. 

What followed was not wholly clear to her, but still she 
got a better idea of what it was all about than she had ever 
got before from listening to Robert’s reading. She had a 
notion, at least, what he meant when he said, ‘In their old 
surroundings the workers have been vaguely unhappy, they have 
been penetrated with a sense that all is not as it should be 
with them — a sentiment which pervades practically the whole 
working-classes of Europe today. They decide at last that their 
lives have become unbearable in the Old Country; they take 
the leap; they land in Canada: there they are, in an odd 
fashion, just as unhappy as they were, though if they are 
capable workers they are at the same time more prosperous than 
they ever dreamed of being in their old homes. All these 
things together — the revolution in their lives, the unexpected 
prosperity, the even more unexpected unhappiness — combine 
to force them to self-consciousness. What they confusedly 
felt at home — that they are not getting their due and that the 
powerful classes are somehow taking an unfair advantage over 
them — develops into a conscious and definite thought. This 
becoming articulate of the dumb discontent of the worker in 
Europe is really the romance of the immigrant.’ 

Miss McGee liked this. If she did not get inside the 
thought of it she certainly liked walking round the walls 
and looking in at the slit windows. She thought it sounded 
“nice.” She was less impressed by it than by the parts of 
Robert’s book that she understood not at all, but at the same 
time she liked it. She had never enjoyed anything out of the 
Canada Book so much. She began to realize that dying a 
thousand deaths beforehand when you may not have to die at 
all is a silly procedure. She breathed a sigh of relief. 

The next portion she understood less. When Robert began 
to lay down the law as to the worker “at home” being articu- 
late publicly, in Trade Unions, and the immigrant becoming 
articulate privately, as an individual in his Canadian home- 
life she did not “get” it quite, as she said. But she liked his 
saying, ‘In Canada the possibility of his (the worker’s) be- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


195 

coming even as the millionaires are is first borne in upon him. 
He sees around him wherever he goes the embodied trans- 
formation of what was on its first arrival in Canada pre- 
cisely what he himself is to-day. Working-men have climbed 
to wealth. Why may not he or his children, or anyway his 
children’s children, be bejeweled and betitled and bedollared 
even as these?’ 

She liked that. Now Robert was ta’alkin’! Sure! She 
even liked it when he said, ‘The worker once landed in 
Canada definitely enters the individualistic stage with its com- 
mercial views and aims; by slow degrees he learns what dis- 
enchantment means. In his hope and in his disenchantment 
lies the romance of the situation. He has behind him cen- 
turies of being ground down to the dust to avenge; his tragedy 
is that he takes his revenge the wrong way for himself.’ 

There were no quotations in this section. Robert was warm- 
ing to his subject and he found enough to do in quoting 
himself. That was nice. It made things more straightfor- 
ward. By the time Robert — this was written on the third 
evening of impulse, the spell of the Po-ut was weakening — 
got to saying ‘this determination of the workers to prove them- 
selves equal to the best is not without its good side — it rapidly 
awakens in them a sense of self-respect,’ Miss McGee found 
herself in enthusiastic accord with him. “What’s got into the 
lad,” she said to herself. “He sure is ta’alkin’ some this 
noight!” And at the conclusion of the reading she was 
sitting at her side of the table looking intently across at him 
in a way she had never looked before. She was no longer 
merely admiring and negatively acquiescent or furiously and 
forlornly acquiescent: this time she was actively interested — 
and critical. Yes, she was critical because for the first time 
she understood: or, if she did not actually understand she 
at least grasped enough of the meaning of Robert’s Paper to 
know that, however clumsily he might express himself, he meant 
well by the workers. The sense of smart and inferiority was 
gone. The stick that was to have been so good and ready to 
hit out at Canada and the workers, too, had — like Tannhauser’s 
— suddenly blossomed out at the top. Miss McGee felt fonder 
of Robert than ever. The up-looking non-understanding rever- 
ent admiration was for the moment, perhaps, gone; but in 
its place had come the warm desire to share with him, in 
so far as she was able, everything she could: to become one, 
indeed, if that were possible, with what she so intensely ad- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


196 

mired. Robert Fulton, all unconsciously and unwittingly, had 
in this section managed to do for Miss McGee what the really 
great authors do for all of us at times. He had lifted her 
up for the moment to his own intellectual level, and had 
thus shared with her his own wider views of life. When 
he had done reading and had placed his pages neatly one on 
top of the other, there was a tremendous pulsating silence, a 
silence that throbbed and vibrated with things that begged 
to be said. He sat with his eyes on his manuscript, placing 
and replacing the pages so that the edges of all were perfectly 
straight and plumb with one another. 

“Say my!” Miss McGee said, breaking into the silence 
after a long quiet pause; and into her voice had come a certain 
appraising quality — a critical admiration. “I want you to 
know that stuff is great.” 

She sat with her arms on the table looking intently across 
at him, and a queer thing happened to her. It was as if 
she, like the stick that should have beaten Canada and the 
workers, had suddenly burst forth into leaf and bloom. The 
years seemed to have fallen from her as she leant across, 
looking thoughtfully at Robert. The shaded light of the coal- 
oil lamp (long ago now she had hunted out of a cupboard 
an old lamp of Ma’a’s — “ ’twill save the eyes of um, God 
bless um!”) fell quietly on her. The lines that a great deal too 
much going out by the day had graven in her face were only 
very faintly visible. Nothing could change the blanched white- 
ness of her hair, but that, in conjunction with the eyes, so 
dark as almost to be black, looked well. The ugly mouth 
wore the smile that made you forget its ugliness; and the 
white unsuitably beautiful hands were folded on the edge 
of the table, clasped, and against them Miss McGee’s full 
breast leaned. Somehow or other, just at that moment, you for- 
got that it was a woman of forty-seven (for Miss McGee had 
had a birthday since the autumn when Robert began to come 
to her) that was looking across at you with those intent eyes. 
One of the miracles that happen every day had happened to 
Miss McGee. The soul — that always stays the same age — 
had got the upper hand ... for the moment. It looked out 
at the black eyes, eternally young, interested, alive immensely — 
conscious of itself — conscious of the soul that at any moment 
might look out at it from just across the table; and it spoke, 
this soul of Miss McGee — it spoke — it spoke . . . 

Robert didn’t hear. His soul was quiescent, lying where 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


197 

souls do lie when we let them be. But as he looked over to 
Miss McGee, with the renewed sensation of friendliness that 
her warm disinterested sympathy was bringing out in him, for 
the first time he became directly conscious, odd as it may sound, 
that she had a body. Her living soul, looking through her 
eyes, made her so intensely alive that even Robert, wrapped 
up as he was in his own little literary concerns, couldn’t help 
becoming conscious of the vitality that throbbed beside him in 
the little room. “Why,” he thought to himself, “she’d make 
a model for a painter!” And, in his mind, he saw the warm 
pulsing rough sketch — the ebauche — that Miss McGee would 
be in the hands of a master. Her very uglinesses would be 
an added note of life. 

All this passed between them without the need of any 
words. Words, indeed, would only have made things shallower 
between them. In that instant of time, as Miss McGee leant 
forward in the rays of the poor little ugly coal-oil lamp with 
its hideous green paper shade and Robert leaning back in his 
chair at the other side of the table sat looking at her, some- 
thing passed between them that could not be put into words; 
one of those things that we may have known in some other 
sphere and may know again — somewhere: but which here and 
now we can only know through the medium of a glance — or a 
touch — or that longing pang of memory ... of what? — that 
shoots through us at the impact of some unexpected scent or 
sound. It was, in that instant of time, as if Robert and 
Miss McGee had remembered some dim united past or had 
forestalled some far-off closely-knit-together future; it was as if 
the symbol we call time had been blotted out for a flash, and 
as if that present moment in Penelope’s Buildings was at the 
same time what had already passed in some far-back, far- 
different surroundings and also what was yet to come in 
some sphere of unimaginable beauty. And when the moment 
was past, they neither of them could have told you anything 
tangible or accurate about it. 

' “I guess ye know somethin’ a’alroight,” Miss McGee said 
slowly, when the time for words had come again. “Say, ye’re 
the Bawss that has the language, Mr. Fulton, eh?” 

Her mode of expressing herself didn’t seem to matter. What 
was behind the words, what had filled the room a moment ago, 
was still so potent that her intensely ugly way of speech didn’t 
jar on Robert one bit. He smiled at her. 

“Why,” she went on slowly, “you got the thing down on 


198 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

a foine point that toime. I guess you ain’t fooled none. Ye 
got eyes, eh. . . 

Could anyone, even though they put it into blank verse or 
alexandrines, say more than this? Can anyone tell any artist 
more than that he has got eyes — and ears: those rare, rare 
adjuncts to humanity? Robert felt the full force of Miss 
McGee’s compliments. He sat drinking in all she could give 
him; he felt that if only she would go on, he could sit all 
night listening to what she had to say. On the previous occa- 
sions he had known well enough that he was not sharing 
any essential part of his work with his auditor — though, to 
comfort the loneliness in him he had once in a way pretended 
that he was. His had been the condition, that pretends with 
one-half that something is, while the other half knows quite 
well all the time that it isn’t. Now such compromises with 
life were unnecessary. Miss McGee liked it. He could see she 
liked it. He said nothing in reply to her remarks, but only 
smiled a little more. 

“Ye never should ‘a’ been here, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee 
said, after a long pause. “Be-lieve me ye’re not roight placed. 
Ye should be somewhere where it’s — beautiful an’ . . . an’ 
foine ” 

The thought passed through her how she would like to give 
him all Mrs. Glassridge’s advantages — Culross, and the soft- 
ness and elegance in which she lived there; the famous ly- 
mousine; the power to go away from Regalia — all the infinity 
of power that Andrew Glassridge’s millions gave. Miss McGee 
felt that if such money had been hers, she would have handed 
it in packets into Robert’s hands, scattered it all round him 
in a brisk crackling shower of dollar bills. She longed to see 
him rich and famous, she felt that she would sell all that 
she possessed — her soul too — and give it to Robert if it 
would benefit him and make him happy and do good to his 
work. 

“Oh, ye should have the mooney, she burst out, ye should 
be rich. My, ain’t ut all a — a blasted shame . . . !” 

Even the unexpectedness of the word — for Miss McGee al- 
ways kept her tongue in order when Robert was in sight — 
couldn’t make any difference. Once more Robert seemed to 
see through words to where feeling sprang in Miss McGee: 
and he saw that the feeling was pure as water where it springs 
at the source of a river. 

“Oh,” he said a little awkwardly — he was unused to this 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


199 


sort of thing — “it’s — it’s all right. I’m all right as I am. I — 
I’m afraid I make a fuss.” 

And for the moment it seemed to him — as to all of us when 
we receive true sympathy — that he did make a fuss. “Poor 
soul,” he thought, “look at her. She has the hard time — and she 
doesn’t grumble.” He forgot that she was inured to her hard- 
ships. He forgot all the excuses he was in the habit of making 
for himself. For the moment he was swung right out of him- 
self into some freer air — where he could breathe and live: and 
he was swung there and held there by the mere force of Miss 
McGee’s sympathy and love. Love is the strongest thing in the 
world. There are no miracles it cannot work — if it is love. 
And is that extraordinary? Is not Love God? 

There seemed nothing more to say. Miss McGee remained 
as she was, leaning against her clasped hands, and gazing 
at Robert. And gradually a smile began to form round her 
mouth and creep into her eyes till presently her face was lighted 
up with a look of pure amusement. What was amusing her 
was a sketch that Robert, in the course of Section IV, had given 
of women’s dress. He had wanted to show the effect of resi- 
dence on the Western side of the Atlantic on the woman- 
worker — on “Woman” in fact: and he had dwelt on the self- 
respect that improved conditions of life awaken in her ‘Never,’ 
had he said, ‘do you see a woman the worse for drink in 
Canada. The craving she may have brought with her from 
Europe, and she may satisfy it surreptitiously; but the sights 
you see in Scotch and English cities — women drunk and stag- 
gering with a child in their arms — are spared you in Canada.’ 
And from this he had gone on gravely to the consideration of 
what women on the two sides of the Atlantic wear. ‘The 
attire of the English and Scottish factory-worker,’ he had said, 
‘vanish with the drink. And’ (here was the delicious part) 
a growl as one may at the apings of the fashion by all and 
sundry in Canada, protest as one may at the waste of the 
little earnings, still one must admit that the coveted “spring 
suit,” constantly pressed out and therefore always uncreased, 
the jealously washed waist, the hideous hat and the high- 
heeled unhygienic boots are more likely to cover a cleanly 
human creature than the much less anxiously evolved and much 
less extravagant clothing of the similarly situated woman at 
home.’ 

“Bless urn,” thought Miss McGee, with that intense and de- 
lighted amusement with which women always greet the purely 


200 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


unsartorial man when he wanders on the sacred precincts of 
Dress. “Bless the choild, he’ll see what the women wears, 
will he! My, ain’t he the Bo’oy!” And her smile seemed 
to emanate from the very soul that had been speaking such a 
different language a moment or two before, and irradiate her 
entire person. 

“What are you laughing at?” said Robert. 

“Nothin’,” said Miss McGee. 

What could she have said? She certainly couldn’t say, 
“I’m laughing at your divagations on the sacred Tom Tiddler’s 
ground of Our clothes.” And equally she couldn’t have ex- 
plained, because she could never have found words to explain 
it in, how deliciously funny she found what he had to say 
on that sublime subject. What was so funny? It was quite 
evident from the wording of his observations that he had 
paid more attention than he had sometimes appeared to be 
paying to Miss McGee’s professional remarks. Usually when 
she had insisted on describing one of Doll Weltman’s Bargain 
Sale treasures — “Say, Mr. Fulton, that wa’as one coat, I tell 
you! Be-lieve me when I say it had braidin’ a’all down the 
back an’ round on the soides. And, say, listen here a minnut. 
It had poipin’s of silk around the ar’rum-holes . . .” — when 
Miss McGee had gone on like that to world without end, 
Robert had seemed to baffle her by retiring into that one fast- 
ness which was exclusively his own : himself. He had appeared 
not to be listening at all. Nothing had been capable of 
rousing him. Beta Hendricks’ radiant appearance in her white 
uniform as Head of the Maternity Hospital in New York, 
Belle’s bit of dawg that she had put on whenever she was goin’ 
to meet up with Fred Perry; Mrs. Barclay’s solid acquisitions 
in fur coats and taffetas silks; Katie Barclay’s unexpected ap- 
pearance in the foulard gown; Mrs. Glassridge fresh from 
the hands of Europe — Miss Healy’s new waist and Mrs. 
Morphy’s swa’all daughter’s fall suit ... all these things 
had seemed alike to go sailing over Robert’s absent head or 
to be trampled under his ungrateful feet. He had, whenever 
Miss McGee had set out on a professional tour, put on such 
a bored, worn, piteous expression that Miss McGee, for very 
pity’s sake, had not gone the lengths she had always originally 
intended to go. She had decided that Robert was not interested 
in women’s dress, and that he never would be; and here now, 
just see, the unexpected had again happened. He had been 
listening — a bit: or else he never would have known enough 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


201 


even to call by their right names the “spring suit” and the 
“waist” that the emigrating lady was said so jealously to wash. 

But the way he mentioned these things ! — that was the 
joy of it. Would any woman, alive or dead, ever have thought 
of saying, ‘growl as one may at the aping of the fashion by 
all and sundry.’ Wasn’t that nice! Wasn’t it delicious! 
And ‘the hideous hat and the high-heeled unhygienic boots that 
are more likely to cover, etc. . . .’ — Could anything beat that? 
Could you possibly go beyond it? As Miss McGee sat look- 
ing at Robert in the light of the old-fashioned little coal- 
oil lamp with the smile that seemed to come from the soul 
beaming out from her face, another thread — but different from 
any thread before — began to unwind itself from her heart 
and travel towards Robert to en-mesh him. If only she had 
had words and grammar and things like that, how differently 
she would have written! It suddenly dawned on her that, on 
one subject at least, Katie McGee had the superiority over 
Robert Fulton, Genius. He never could or would write as she 
could and would write on Clothes ... if only she had his 
and Nellie’s elegant educations. “My, my,” she said to her- 
self, “he don’t know. The sweethear’rt ! — he’s as innocent as 
the da’awn.” And both Robert’s ignorance and the pains he 
had evidently taken to remove this ignorance filled Miss Mc- 
Gee with a great big motherly delight in him as she sat con- 
templating him in the light of the coal-oil lamp. 

“What are you laughing at?” said Robert. 

“Nothin’,” said Miss McGee. 

Possibly if it had been turned the other way and Miss 
McGee had had her elegant education and had written on 
Clothes, Robert Fulton would have felt that keenest of keen 
joys — the pleasure in someone else’s being able to do what one 
cannot do oneself: the obverse of what Miss McGee was feel- 
ing at the moment. “I never could have written like that,” 
Robert Fulton would have said to himself, listening to Katie 
McGee’s thesis, “and if I could have done it, I wouldn’t.” — 
And he would have felt a corresponding delight. The sense 
of one’s own personality is enhanced by the evidence of an- 
other personality entirely different; the realization that one 
can do what someone else cannot, and equally that that some- 
one else can do what one cannot do oneself whets the grind- 
stone of life and keeps it sharp. When Robert Fulton came 
to go, he took Miss McGee’s absurdly pretty hand in his and 
kept it there. “I’ve enjoyed my evening,” he said. “I’ve en- 


202 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


joyed it.” And when he had gone Miss McGee said to herself, 
“Gee, I’ll never git all fussed up again as sure’s me name’s 
McGee.” She began to tidy up for the night, raking out the 
fire in the grate, putting back a chair here, straightening an 
antimacassar there. “Sure ef it ain’t the dam-fool thing I 
been,” she said to herself. “The bo’oy of um! He don’t 
know.” The sentence about woman’s clothes came sailing into 
her mind again. “Oh, bless um, bless um,” she thought, 
“God bless um!” — and she began to laugh. “Sure Mike, 
he’s got the wor’rld to lear’rn.” 

For good and all the terrors of the Canada Book were 
removed. Miss McGee felt that, were she able to understand 
all that portion that did not relate to Clothes, she would en- 
joy it. It was the ignorance of the Canada Book that had 
broken down the barriers between itself and Miss McGee and 
at last made her its friend. 


CHAPTER XXIX 

O NE would have thought that when, for the first time too, 
Robert had got Katie McGee’s sympathy and (provis- 
ional) understanding, he would have prosecuted the mak- 
ing of the Canada Book with ardor, and tried to set it on 
its way. Not at all. After Section IV he lapsed entirely from 
the point of the porcupine-quill pen, and wrote, for a time, 
no more. Perhaps his impulse to write had ridden him too 
hard. Perhaps the microbe with which the Po-ut had inoculated 
him had been a swift microbe with a short and an impulsive s 
life. Perhaps also Robert’s vitality was not quite equal to the 
rate of writing to which the microbe had pushed him — two 
whole sections of carefully thought-out stuff in three short 
nights. He was underfed too. His breakfast was little and 
his lunch was less ; and his evening meal — a sausage, a sardine, 
an egg (strictly old-laid), sometimes a chop (pretty tough and 
greasy), followed by what Miss McGee called “dessert,” apple 
sa’ace or a canned plum of something of that kind — was 
hardly enough, in and of itself, to build up a very fierce fire 
in a man. Then, too, Robert was his own housemaid. He 
had his room to “keep,” his fire-place, when he used it, to 
clean. This of itself was enough to keep him from writing 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


203 

if* the impulse wasn’t very strong. He didn’t like housemaid’s 
work. And it isn’t easy either to do such work when you 
have outside duties and are away all day. 

After Section IV too, Robert had a bad accession of boredom. 
He felt that nothing at all — let alone Canada Books — was 
worth doing; and so he did as little as he could. The acute 
anguished ante-Christmas boredom had passed away. He was 
merely stolidly bored now. He went on with his routine, 
did his work at the store: and even there he didn’t suffer 
as he had suffered before Christmas. He just felt increasingly 
that nothing mattered, that life is a bad job, that he wished 
he were well out of it. It all seemed purposeless — useless. 
It hardly seemed worth while to take the trouble to go on 
living. Robert Fulton didn’t definitely or passionately wish 
to die as he plodded home night after night in February — 
the month of snow-falls in the Canadian year: he certainly 
wished that he was not alive and sometimes that he had never 
been born. But it takes vitality passionately to wish yourself 
dead; more vitality still to take the further step — and be dead. 
Robert’s red* blood-corpuscles were not equal to any such definite 
fact as that. 

The world with the coming of the new year had turned into 
a soft fluffy eider-downy world, with great drifts and walls 
of snow everywhere. Sometimes as Robert was walking home 
he saw how beautiful it was; a world soft, sheeny, and whitely 
shimmering; or else a world blotted out altogether by falling 
snow — snow between him and the ground, snow between him 
and the sky, snow between him and the houses, and the 
trees — snow, as it sometimes seemed to him, between him and 
reality. Robert often felt when he came home in such a night 
as this that the snow clinging to his hair and feet, to his eye- 
brows and eyelashes, couldn’t be real. He felt as if he had 
wandered far, and had come at last into some enchanted land 
where everything was quiet and muffled; where only now and 
again sleigh-bells came ringing through, and a dim horse went 
by, close for an instant, and then passed into unreal snow again. 

The beauty of such nights as he saw them, hurrying to get to 
Miss McGee’s warm fire, never came near to him. He saw 
them from afar, as it were, intellectually. They couldn’t 
touch him, move him, urge him to production of his own, as 
other beauty could do. Sometimes when his eyes would catch 
a snow-laden branch, bending beautifully under its pile of 
soft cushion-ey snow, he would indeed stop, and look at it a 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


204 

moment. But the idea that it principally suggested to him 
was, “Will winter ever be done!” And when he had looked 
a moment he would push on again with a shiver and with 
a renewed wish that he was out of it — for ever. 

He did sometimes feel the need for that other kind of beauty 
— not nature’s but the beauty that man makes for himself with 
effort and urge. He felt this so keenly on some nights that 
he would slip away from Miss McGee’s after the insufficient 
supper, and walk along once more through the snowy night 
to the Art Circle; and once there, mount the staircase, stand 
at the turn, and gaze at “Sleep!” This seemed to comfort him. 
As he stood before it he would think, “Some man somewhere 
once saw that face in life, and he felt that he must make 
it his own — by re-creating it.” He would stand and look at 
the fine oval of the face, at the chin, so round, so living 
even in the stucco cast, at the mouth that when it was alive 
must surely have spoken living words. Robert Fulton, gazing 
at “Sleep,” would sometimes feel that this life of his was 
not life at all. He would feel as if he were already among 
the dead — or amongst those shades who neither live nor die: 
and the sense of longing that had shaken him sick on the 
way in to the Lecture would take him once more — worry him, 
toss hirfe, as a terrier shakes a rat — and drop him back in Miss 
McGee’s room tired, weary, heart-sick, hopeless. 

“Sure, why do ye step out into the noight?” Miss McGee 
would often say to him when he got back. “Them pictures’ll 
not run away sure. Ye should stay home, me dear. Wait 
till the foine weather comes an’ then go look at ’em.” She 
often spoke to him as a kindly nurse speaks to a child. “Will 
ye not go on with yer great grand wroitin’ eh?” she would 
say. And when he would merely shake his head, too listless 
to explain, she would bend over the fire and stir up the coal 
to a brighter blaze, oblivious of the war-shortage of fuel and 
the difficulty and expense of getting any more coal at all, 
and think how possibly she could “better” his life. “Was 
ut the free evenin’ to-noight at the Art Circle there,” she would 
ask, “or did ye have to pay out mooney?” 

Probably there were two things definitely wrong with Robert 
Fulton — and neither of these two things would be put into 
definite words, even to himself. The first was of course the 
War. In 1918 the thoughts of everyone were concentrated on 
that great fact, and on that great fact alone. What was 
happening overseas, the battles, the slaughter, who would come 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


205 

out top in the desperate struggle — what would become of the 
world when the struggle was done: these things occupied the 
minds of men — and women took newspapers tremblingly in 
their hands and scanned the columns with the endless lists of 
names. . . . 

War was alien to Robert Fulton’s every idea of life. By 
right of the make of both his body and mind, he was a pacifist 
— though no coward. He had been willing to give himself 
and his life and his conceptions of life and what life ought 
to be and let the War do with it what it would. He had 
offered himself. He had been “turned down.” As he had come 
away from that rejection he had brought with him a mind torn 
in two: he had felt relief . . . and he had felt a miserable 
sense that he was being forcibly turned back from the only 
real duty that lay before him. This double attitude of his 
persisted. Had he been at the War, had he waited in the terrible 
trenches ai^d rushed over No Man’s Land into the German 
trenches opposite — he would undoubtedly have been miserable. 
But he could not have been more miserable than he was in 
the Arundel Store, feeling day after day that he was degradingly 
safe. He was safe there. It added a poisoned pin’s point 
to his daily misery that in the place he loathed he was safe. 
This mental discord was at the root of his acute dejection 
during the winter of 1917-18. He very rarely spoke of the 
War; merely exchanging briefly with Miss McGee the news of 
the day, whatever it might be, and then dismissing the subject. 
And the fact of Miss McGee being on no side at all — for to 
hope the English will win and yet be delighted whenever they 
get a slap in the face is not being on the side of the Allies 
(and yet Miss McGee loyally hated the Germans) — made 
it easier for him to keep silent about the battles as they came 
and passed away. He thought about the War, God knows. But 
his thoughts weren’t satisfactory thoughts, and he tried to get 
away from them when he could. It was like some accursed 
riddle — the further he got away from them the nearer he was. 
“My God,” he used to say to himself sometimes as he walked 
home through the snow, “why wasn’t I made in some decent 
kind of a way?” There were moments when he envied the 
possessors of the cheap jingo patriotism that he heard resound- 
ing on every side of him; and by the side of a returned man in 
the store — with his little mark of service on his white linen 
lapel — Robert would sometimes feel a sort of pang of envy. 
“He’s been through it anyway,” he would think. “He's been 


206 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


some good.” His detestation of war mingled inextricably with 
his desire to be in the midst of it. 

This confused feeling crept into the Canada Book. He 
didn’t speak there of the War, of course: in fact the Canada 
Book seemed to be an odd little book to be writing at all 
when the whole world was a seething mass of fury and fight. 
It was queer to be sitting down considering what Canada did 
for immigrants and what immigrants did for Canada just 
at a time when the immigrants were streaming “home” with 
no thought of Canada in their minds. It was rather a time to 
be writing a book to show that everyone stayed exactly what he 
was wherever he emigrated to — and Robert was conscious him- 
self that his was a queer little book to be writing in the midst 
of a war-ridden world. “What’s the good of my sitting down,” 
he would ask himself, “to set down platitudes on humanity 
when humanity’s gone mad ?” And it was probably this thought 
that, more than anything else, forced him from the pen’s point 
after his three nights of work: and it was also this thought 
that set another thought, close to this one in his mind, jangling. 

He felt the Canada Book wasn’t real. He had not felt this — 
at all — when he began to write it. He had taken care to have 
his facts accurate, his desire was to set them down as he knew 
them and as they would be most intelligible to other people. 
As he sat up in his little lonely room, bent over his deal table, 
the Canada Book seemed to him entirely real — often sur- 
prisingly real: he did feel occasionally, setting down the facts 
that had collected themselves in his mind, that he was ap- 
proaching the veritable thing — humanity itself. But when he 
came into contact with humanity (to give Miss McGee that 
grand name!), when he went down just two flights of stairs 
and came into the first-floor looking out on Drayton Place, 
and Miss McGee sat at the other side of her ugly oblong table — 
then things seemed different. From the very first time that he 
had read his book to Miss McGee he had been conscious of 
something in himself — a slight, a very slight dissatisfaction 
that it was difficult for him to put into exact words. He felt, 
even that first time, that something was wrong with the Canada 
Book; and as the Sections had gone on, he had felt this 
increasingly. It was of no use his saying to himself, as 
he did, that Miss McGee liked it, enjoyed it, that it roused and 
made an appeal to her. He did say these things to himself as 
he went up-stairs to bed; but at the back of these encouraging 
remarks there was a constant consciousness that Miss McGee 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


207 

didn’t altogether enjoy the Canada Book; that it didn’t appeal 
to her, though it certainly did rouse her, and, above all, that 
she didn’t understand it. 

Of course it was easy to dwell on the fact of Miss McGee’s 
educationless state. It was easy to say to himself, “Oh, she 
doesn’t understand” But the fact remains that authors like 
people to understand their things, education or no education; 
Moliere himself surely must have been daunted if his house- 
keeper, when he had read to her one of his best scenes, only 
stared back at him with expressionless, lack-luster eyes. Miss 
McGee never did this; but Robert, whose keen perceptions just 
as often were a hindrance as a help to him, was conscious 
often of a certain reserve in her. He knew that, if she would, 
she could say more. And she only didn’t, partly because 
she didn’t command the words to say what she wanted, and 
partly because she didn’t want to hurt her guest’s feelings. 

Section IV had been the success of the lot; and yet, Robert as 
he left Miss McGee after reading it, and still more during the 
days that immediately followed, kept saying to himself, “It 
isn’t right. Something’s wrong somewhere.” The vision of 
the puzzled — and sometimes the directly antagonistic — look 
that he saw in Miss McGee’s eyes came up before him. “If 
it was right” he said to himself, “she wouldn’t look like that. 
I’m not getting the right point of view. . . .” With this 
uncertainty in his Canada Book, his desire for it floated away 
— for the time — and he felt not the slightest desire to write 
down anything more. Even the Po-ut’s beauty which remained 
with him as an almost constant guest, sometimes, but only 
sometimes, seemed to him to be lacking in something. “What?” 
he would ask himself. He could never answer that. The 
Po-ut was beautiful and aristocratic, what he said and wrote 
was finished and exquisite — isolated lines and necklets and 
rings of words still seemed to Robert to be set with priceless 
gems — but . . . well what? Robert felt that, far away from 
and ever so far behind the Po-ut, he was. on the same road ; 
and it was a road he didn’t want to be on. He put away 
the four finished sections of the Canada Book neatly in the 
packing-case he had arranged as a cupboard, and he shut the 
door on them. “It isn’t real,” he said to himself, “and things 
that aren’t real are no good.” “Sleep” was real enough — it, 
in some mysterious way, united beauty and reality, as Robert 
and the Po-ut did not. By February Robert’s life consisted, 
just as it had done before the Canada ;Book began to exist at 


208 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


all, in going to the Arundel Market and coming home 
again . . . and being with Miss McGee. 

Deep down discontent with himself and his life smoldered 
within him: and Miss McGee, sitting looking at him from the 
other side of her fire — worried. 


CHAPTER XXX 

M AC’S “goin’-away par’rty,” as Miss McGee called it, 
descended into the midst of all this and didn’t mend 
matters. Mac was determined to go. He didn’t want 
ever to see Rose again. Rose had wounded him by insisting 
on having nothing to do with him: and he wanted to be 
away from her, to go somewhere where it would be impos- 
sible to meet her round any corner. He wanted to wipe Rose 
Garry out of his life, forget her, forget all the miseries and 
joys she had kindled in his heart. While he stayed in Regalia 
things that had been kept coming up in that heart of his how- 
ever hard and resolutely he pushed them down; and he wanted 
to be somewhere where these things would not keep coming 
up into his heart — somewhere where he would never be re- 
minded of Rose Garry again. 

He remembered — very often and always in spite of himself — 
one day when he had been out at “Garryton,” as the Garry’s 
residence at Massonville was called, for an afternoon call. A 
married cousin had been there, and the married cousin’s little 
girl had also been there, a pretty little saucy thing of six or 
sevejj, all smiles and white starched petticoats. Mac, who was 
unfeignedly fond of children, had begun to play with Daise. 
He had taken her into his arms, told her stories of bonny 
Scotland across the seas, and then, when this amusement had 
shown signs of palling, he had turned to romping — running 
after Miss Daise, catching her, tossing her up in his arms, 
catching her again and kissing her, to the accompaniment of 
shrieks of joy. This had gone on for some time when Rose 
had come on the scene. Mac remembered — how he wished 
he could forget it ! — how the rare pink — she hardly ever blushed 
— had come into Rose’s cheeks and gradually flooded her face 
and neck. “Put her down, Mac,” she had said. “Put her 
down” And she had come forward and taken the child out 
of his arms, and smoothed down the starched white petticoats 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


209 

over the plump legs. “Go and play quietly, Daise,” she had 
said, “like a little lady. Cousin Mae will play with you.” 
And, with the pink still in her cheeks, she had turned to Mac. 
“Don’t do that again, Mac,” she had said. “It isn’t — nice.” 

It had been that day that Rose Garry had definitely entered 
Fisher Macpherson’s heart. Her modesty, her sense of what 
was fitting for womanhood even at the age of six, had touched 
his good Scotch sense of decency. “The douceness of her,” he 
had found himself saying to himself over and over again that 
day when he had left Garryton; and the image of Rose, pink 
and determined, taking the child out of his arms and then 
bending down to smooth the little starched garments into their 
proper places had never left him since. There he had seen 
the wife — and the mother — he wanted. He had done all he 
could. He had attacked the citadel of her faith at every point 
he knew. But — here was the definite break between them — 
Mac never would consent to have children of his brought up 
in the Catholic faith; and Rose Garry, serene and compact 
in her beliefs, could as little have borne that any child of 
her body could be brought up in any other than the Holy 
Roman church. On this rock the love of the two had split. 
Theirs was not the love that clears all obstacles before it. 
The love of both of them was tinged with this- worldliness, 
though they thought it other- worldliness : their churches stood 
between them. “I’ll go,” Mac said to himself after the third 
time he had stormed Rose Garry’s citadel and been repulsed. 
“I’ll go and leave her — and forget her.” His good Scotch 
pride was wounded. His vanity was touched. Yet as he said 
the word “forget” the little picture, vignetted on his heart 
for this life for all he might do to rub it out — Rose in her 
white frock with her neat hair and her flushed cheeks taking 
the child out of his arms — came pushing up through his desired 
forgetfulness. He knew he never would forget Rose Garry. 
And at the same time his dour Scotch determination forced 
him away from her. “Mac’s tickled all to death with Rose, 
eh,” Mrs. Morphy, to whom Mac had related the starched petti- 
coat incident, had said once to Miss McGee. “ ’Tis mawdesty 
' takes the fellas, eh, McGee ! They’ll play up to the sporty ones 
a’alroight, but Glory be to Gawd, ’tis the mawdest gir’rls 
they’ll marry.” 

“I guess me sister brings her gir’rls up a’alroight,” had been 
all Miss McGee’s reply. 

And now Mac was definitely going. He was leaving his 


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OUR LITTLE LIFE 


good job with its chance of a rise; he was parting from Regalia 
where he had made friends and where he had hoped to found 
a home of his own. He was going away from his “Old Lady” 
out into the vague and forlorn: and the reason, the cause of 
it all was Rose Garry, white, unspeaking, resolute, going to the 
Bank and doing her daily work there, quietly, methodically; 
and then coming home again and taking her share of what was 
to do in the Garry household. Rose always had taken her 
share — and more than her share — of everything disagreeable 
that had come her way. She did unpleasant things as by a 
sort of right. She accepted whatever came, making no fuss. She 
was self-respecting, narrow, unswerving in the path of duty. 
There was never so much as a pin awry about her — she had 
always been the nuns’ pet at her Convent School. While 
Nellie spent her life losing everything and never knowing 
where to find it again, Rose spent hers with everything calcu- 
lated and exact. She was neatness and economy itself. 

“I guess Mac there’d be tickled a’alroight with a par’rty, eh, 
McGee,” Mrs. Morphy said another night when Miss McGee 
was dressing her leg — an office no longer to be conceived of 
but as the work of a true sister of charity — “How’s that, eh? 
Let’s give um a send-awf so he knows he has friends.” 

“One sure thing, Fisher Macpherson has friends roight here 
in Regalia, Mrs. Morphy ” Miss McGee had answered. “An’ 
I guess he’d know ut sure ef they was to give um a par’rty.” 
Having thus delivered her opinion Miss McGee kept a silence 
as resolute as Rose’s own to all succeeding remarks of Mrs. 
Morphy’s as to some friends that were no friends and her own 
unchanging desire to “spank Rose Garry good.” But there 
and then, at any rate, the question of Mac’s par’rty itself was 
settled. 

Since Mrs. Morphy was no longer able herself to cook the 
supper on which it was felt the success of the evening mainly 
depended (she could hardly get round the kitchen now, and 
Miss McGee often found her in tears of misery and pain) her 
second daughter was approached on the subject, and she prom- 
ised to come round “good an’ early” the day of the party 
and do what she could. Mrs. Finn (wife of Danny, son of 
Old Nancy of the Irish jig) was what her mother called 
“no great shakes at a supper.” Poor Nonnie Finn was no 
great shakes at anything at all. She was a kindly good- 
natured thing that had once been pretty and now was slat- 
ternly. She had a husband who was a rake and who kept 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


211 


her short of everything, happiness included. She was a devoted 
mother and spent her life caring for the children who were 
already there, and having more of them year by year. Miss 
McGee’s remarks on Danny Finn and his ever-increasing family 
were instructive. “Sure he’s the busy man,” she would remark 
whenever she heard there was another baby coming. But ' 
Nonnie Finn resisted nothing. She was like a spaniel with 
her humble manner and her soft brown eyes. Her hair that 
had once been golden was fading. Her eyes had lost the 
brightness they had once had. Moll McKennay, her sister 
who had married “good” and who had by now re-christened her- 
self “Marguerite” had not been a thousandth part so pretty 
as little Norah Morphy. But now . . . ! — Mrs. McKennay 
was It. You would hardly believe to look at the two of them — 
Marguerite all trim and corseted and not doing anything what- 
soever for herself any more, and Nonny down-at-heel, dirty, no 
longer thinking about herself much at all — that there ever could 
have been any comparison of any kind between the sisters. 
Mrs. Marguerite McKennay was as surely climbing up the hill 
as Mrs. Nonnie Finn was rolling down it. Pat McKennay was 
“landed” in a good business and making the best of it; and 
Danny Finn was landed in nothing at all but betting and 
drinking and coming home drunk and beating his wife, and 
generally galloping to ruin as fast as he could. There was 
no doubt, however, which daughter Mrs. Morphy liked best. 
Nonnie was like herself. Even in her early girlhood she had 
been a slender edition of her mother. “Nonnie’s the goods 
a’alroight, be-lieve me” she always said: and when Nonnie 
promised to get someone in her place to look after the kids 
so she could come around to her mother’s and see to the cook- 
ing of the par’rty supper, Mrs. Morphy said to Miss McGee in 
a very self-satisfied tone, “Nonnie’ll come. She'll take hold.” 

To which Miss McGee only replied, “She’ll take hold, I guess, 
as good as she knows how” — and since it was felt that Miss 
McGee thus expressed only the general sentiment as to Nonnie’s 
powers, it was decided to approach Maggie Chambers, and 
ask her if, in her capacity as professed cook, she would be 
good enough to “take hold” behind Nonnie, and pull the 
supper through. Miss Chambers accepted the approaching gra- 
ciously. “We’ll have petty poys a la parfait,” said she in- 
stantly, speaking in her professional capacity, “an’ Potiphar’s 
grass.” 

“ ’Deed then an’ we won’t,” said Mrs. Morphy to that. 


212 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“We’ll have peas in their can an’ sparro wgrass out of ut.” 

“ ’T’ain’t sparrow grass I’m speakin’ of,” said Miss Chambers 
with a touch of scorn, “ ’tis goose’s livers, Mrs. Morphy.” 

“ ’Tis the goose’ll be on the table, Miss,” was Mrs. Morphy’s 
rejoinder, “an’ his liver insoide of um.” 

“The gall of her,” Mrs. Morphy confided later on to Miss 
McGee. “ ’Tis her’ll fix me supper, eh ! Me supper’s moine, 
Ma’am. ’Tis me’ll fix ut.” The “Ma’am” was no sign of 
offense with Miss McGee. It was merely Mrs. Morphy pointing 
her moral. There were times when Miss McGee felt that 
Mac’s par’rty supper was a sort of volcano that, before it was 
finished and done with, might blow up and scatter boiling 
lava around. She felt a certain relief that she was “out of 
ut.” 

Her part was to set the table. Either by some personal 
attribute or by virtue of her profession, or by the mystic 
influence of “Uncle’s mooney,” Miss McGee was acknowledged 
by the Buildings to be a person of taste. Penelopians came 
to consult her, not only as to details of their attire but also 
as to the pattern of Mr. Somebody’s new trousers, or how they 
should “fix” the furniture in their rooms. And Miss McGee 
took their consultations as a matter of course. She felt in 
herself the presence of something that gave her a right to be thus 
consulted. Possibly it was the thing that made her wear , 
her old clothes the way she did; probably if Uncle’s mooney 
had never existed her neighbors would still have consulted her. 
Anyway, as soon as it was a question of who should set the 
par’rty table, the job was instantly voted to Katie McGee 
as a matter of course. She accepted the appointment also 
as a matter of course, as a sort of divine right; and she began 
to make plans (by ill-luck it was the pernickity customer she 
was engaged to for the day) to get home a bit earlier so she 
could cawncentrate her moind on table decoration. “I mean 
ut shall look jes’ so,” she said to herself a good many times 
over, balancing this decoration against that in her mind. “He 
(she meant Robert) shan’t have nothin’ to tur’rn um against ut 
(she meant the par’rty) ef my name’s McGee.” 

The meal itself was to be It. Mrs. Morphy provided a 
pair of ducks and one fowl and a goose — the last so as to be 
upsoides with Maggie. Dan (he happened to be what Mrs. 
Morphy called “flush”) came down, on his invitation, with a 
tur’rkey, Gawd bless um, and a bottle of Scotch. Mrs. 
Morphy herself saw to the gin. Pat McKennay (as an apology 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


213 


for Marguerite, who refused to be present at all) sent in a 
couple of bottles of Irish and a couple more bottles of Man- 
hattan cocktails and three big bricks of ice-cream from the 
“swa’all” confectioner of the city. Nonnie Finn undertook 
to make layer-cakes “with a chaw’clate icin’ on top” for des- 
sert and Maggie Chambers promised to “kape the eye over 
a’all.” Dubois, the grocery on the corner of Drayton Place 
and St. Hubert’s Boulevard went on sending in canned stuff 
and cauliflowers and apples and oranges and dates and figs 
and nuts until he got tired of it : and then his contribution to the 
feast was to say that he wouldn’t send any more. “Him want 
to see ze couleur de ses dollar,” remarked the French errand- 
lad. “You tell that Dubois there he ain’t got the spur’rt of a 
mouse,” was Mrs. Morphy’s reply. But even this did not 
bring any more groceries. The mouse went on strike. 

“God save us,” was Miss McGee’s remark to herself as she 
arrived, breathless from the pernickity customer on the par’rty 
night. “This sure is the filthiest dur’rtiest place!” Mrs. 
Morphy’s kitchen seemed to her, looking through Robert’s eyes 
as she was doing, far dirtier than she had ever seen it before. 
She hoped that Robert would not notice the unwashedness of 
the floor — nor the unwashedness of Mrs. Morphy and of Mrs. 
Finn. “Sure, gen’leman doesn’t notuss,” she said consolingly 
to herself, as she scuttled round striving to create order out of 
the chaos poor Nonnie had been busy evolving. all day long. 
Mrs. Morphy’s hair was waved. Miss McGee trusted that 
Robert’s eyes would be taken with his hostess’s comeliness, that 
his eyes would travel no lower than Mrs. Morphy’s face which, 
though oddly dragged and aged of late, still bore the traces of 
a comely youth. “She’s been the pretty woman, don’t forgit 
ut,” Miss McGee had said to Robert on the one occasion of his 
having seen Mrs. Morphy. He had been brought down to be 
introduced to her. “She’s been the beauty in her toime, Mr. 
Fulton, eh,” Miss McGee had said to him rather wistfully on 
their way up-stairs. But all Robert’s reply had been “Has 
she?” 

He hadn’t fancied Mrs. Morphy. He had detested her slat- 
ternliness and her easy tolerance of everything she shouldn’t 
have tolerated and her fat all-embracing laugh. He had felt 
that he never would know what Mrs. Morphy would be say- 
ing next — except that it would be sure to be something he 
would rather not hear. No, Robert hadn’t liked her. 

And he hadn’t wanted to come to the par’rty either. He 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


214 

had done his best to get out of it. But Miss McGee had been 
so earnest that he should come. She had felt so acutely that 
he needed a change and that this would be better than noth- 
ing perhaps — she had so pressed and begged, that, at last, re- 
luctantly, Robert had accepted Mrs. Morphy’s invitation. 
“Sure, fetch yer young bo’oy along, eh, McGee,” Mrs. Mor- 
phy had said, half in good-nature, half in curiosity. The 
news had spread long ago round Penelope’s Buildings that Miss 
McGee had a bo’oy; and it was only the something that Miss 
McGee had about her — the same thing that made them ask 
her to set the table as a matter of course — that prevented the 
Penelopians from joking her openly about it. They didn’t 
joke Miss McGee, however. They knew better. 

Miss McGee “fixed” the table as well as ever she could. 
She had brought down a basketful of things of her own — 
amongst other things, the candlesticks that her mother had al- 
ways decorated the Christmas table with — and, with all the 
taste that was in her, she set these things out at her best. Her 
contribution had been pink candles to put in the candlesticks, 
and little candle-shades that she had manufactured up-stairs 
in the evenings out of bits and scraps she got out of her 
“scrap-bag.” The shades were very neatly made. They fitted 
well over the pink candles, and in everyone’s opinion they 
formed the chef-d’oeuvre of the table. “I guess they’ll look 
noice loighted, a’alroight,” Miss McGee said reflectively, sur- 
veying her handiwork. “Them paper napkins is a nice match, 
ain’t they, Mrs. Morphy, eh?” The paper napkins were pink 
to go with the shades, and, in a small “vayse” in the center 
of the table there were three pink roses surrounded with “baby’s 
breath.” It was the purely decorative part of the feast that 
had been Miss McGee’s contribution to its festivity. 

When the table was finished she hurried upstairs and slipped 
into her best frock, and gave her hair a hurried wave, and 
dabbed a hurried layer of powder on her nose. As she worked 
at herself before the glass she hardly saw herself. She was 
completely absent-minded, thinking of the table set down- 
stairs and the party that were coming to sit round it, and of 
the way the table and the people sitting round it would strike 
Robert. “I guess he won’t notuss the way the kitchen’s fixed,” 
she said to the image in the glass. “He won’t notuss the dir’rt 
on the floor none, bless um! I guess. Gen’lemen don’t.” She 
rapidly reviewed the guests and felt they were certainly not 
up to Robert’s level: and then Mac came into her mind with 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


215 

a refreshing sense of his, at any rate, being “a’alroight.” 
“Sure, Mac’ll fix um,” she thought. “I guess they’ll be the 
way two peas lies in the pod.” And she thought, with an 
even greater regret than usual, that Mac was going away and 
that Robert would not be able to see any more of him. “They’d 
be the friends,” she had often thought: and she had often 
wanted to bring them together — only she hadn’t known how. 

But as soon as Robert came into the room down-stairs she 
knew she had made a mistake. She had had him come alone, 
without her, because she knew what people would “say,” and 
she wanted to save him from what that would be: and, as she 
sat by Mrs. Morphy’s fire — she had come early on purpose — 
and heard Robert’s tap on the door — she recognized it at once — 
and watched him come hesitatingly in and stand as close by 
the door as he could, she realized instantly that she would 
have done better to leave him alone as he had wanted to be 
left alone, and never have dragged him there at all. 

Robert, without the slightest desire to do so, looked entirely 
different from the company into which Miss McGee had al- 
most forcibly brought him. He didn’t necessarily look bet- 
ter — it all depended on the way you looked at it. He looked 
different; and it only required the most superficial glance to 
see that, however much he might wish to do so, it wouldn’t 
be possible for him to amalgamate with what he was amongst: 
he quite evidently hadn’t a grain of sympathy with anything 
present — and it is sympathy that is the amalgamating force. 
He didn’t care even for Mac (Miss McGee had been wrong), 
clean, spruce, tidy, business-like as Mac looked. Mac was 
to Robert antipathetic — just as Robert himself was antipathetic 
to Mac. Mac disliked Robert’s quiet unobtrusive way of 
speech quite as much as Robert could possibly dislike Mac’s 
own broad vowels and super-accented consonants. And Bert 
Baird, Mac’s “best” friend, who arrived almost simultaneous- 
ly with Robert, bearing a three-pound box of “chaw’clates” in 
his hand, Robert didn’t like him any better than Mac. They 
were well-doing young men, both of them. They were far 
better off than Robert. They knew how to take Canada, and 
Canada knew how to take them. After a bit each of these 
young men would hold a bit of Canada in the hollow of his 
hand, and that bit of Canada would like to be held, and 
would give proof of liking it by giving up its dollar bills. 
You had only to look at Bert Baird and Mac to see that they 
would be well-off some day. “ ’Deed an’ it’s Rose is the 


2l6 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


fool-gir’rl of her” — Mrs. Morphy was right. Mac’s wife would 
be the only one. He would be a good father, bringing up his 
sons in the way they should go, steering their path close by 
the Mammon of Unrighteousness, yet never into it, he would 
bring his daughters home presents, furs and jewels . . . and 
yet there was something in Mac’s cold clear blue eyes that 
Robert didn’t like; there was even something in it as it rested 
on himself that Robert resented. It seemed to say, “What for 
do ye give yerself airs, Man? I see nothin’ in ye that’s pref- 
erable to the rest of us.” Robert didn’t want to give him- 
self airs. No one could have been more genuinely modest 
than he. But his modesty ran in a peculiar channel — the Eng- 
lish Channel; the one that divides England from the rest of 
the world. There was something in the way Robert wore his 
clothes, in the way he brushed his hair and put on his shoes, 
in the way that he said “how do you do,” or “I beg your par- 
don,” that irritated everyone . . . who was not an English- 
man too. He had only to walk into a room — or the Arundel 
Market — or go quietly along the street — to raise hostile feelings 
in those about him. And the only thing to be said in defense 
of Canada is that it would have been the same had Robert been 
in France — or in Italy — or Spain — or Belgium — or Holland — 
or the United States of America — or anywhere else. He was 
English. 

Mac did not suffer from this disability. He was Scotch, 
like Bert Baird (who had been Robbie Baird in Scotland), 
and when either of these two opened their mouths and the 
broad Scotch accent dropped out, they irritated no one — ex- 
cept the English. Mac and Bert could walk along Regalia’s 
Wellston Road or Argyll Crescent after Church on Sunday 
just as if it were Union Street, Aberdeen, or Princes Street, 
Edinburgh. They were quite at home. No one noticed them 
specially, except to say in tones of approbation now and then, 
“See them young fellas there? Swa’all, eh?” They had 
adapted themselves. Canada had received them as her own. 

Miss McGee had not been about the world enough to realize 
these fine shades of nationalities. She liked Mac as everyone 
else did. She thought him a perfect gen’leman, as indeed 
he was. She admired the cut of his clothes and the way he 
spoke and his clean-cut determined jaw. And she liked Bert 
Baird too, with his dapper appearance and his jokes and 
nonsense (for Bert was the jocose Scot); she had said to 
herself a good many times during the week preceding the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


217 


par’rty, “Them’s two young gen’lemen a’alrdight you bet, an’ 
ef they kin do with Mrs. Morphy, I guess he kin.” Now she 
saw she was wrong. 

Robert came inside the kitchen, just inside, and quite pas- 
sively allowed himself to be jostled aside by Bert Baird and 
the box of chaw’clates, and did nothing at all— just stood. 
Bert elbowed his way right up to Mrs. Morphy herself, seated 
close by Miss McGee at the kitchen fire with her leg on a 
stool, and said to her, “Madam, the day has come, bedad, 
fer which I been layin’ awake all noight!” And with this 
adaptation of Mrs. Morphy’s brogue, he laid the box of candies 
in her lap. 

“Git away widg ye,” said Mrs. Morphy, instantly becom-, 
ing more Irish than ever. “Did iver anyone see sech a kid!” 

She laughed and they all laughed, and she was turning to 
Miss McGee to make some further observation when Katie 
gave her elbow a jog. 

“Sure, Mrs. Morphy,” she said, “ye know Mr. Fulton, eh.” 

“Be sure!” returned Mrs. Morphy: and she beckoned to 
Robert. “Come roight here an’ set down be me foire,” said 
she: and then, instantly beginning the introductions, “Here’s 
me da’ater Nonnie, an’ here’s Danny Finn, her man. An’ 
here’s Gen’leman Dan,” indicating her lodger. “An’ here’s 
Maggie that’s Miss Chambers — Mr. Fulton, meet Miss Cham- 
bers, eh. An’ there’s Pat McKennay (come on, Pat, here an’ 
be inthrojuiced), an’ me da’ater, Moll McKennay that wouldn’t 
come. An’ here’s Bert Baird, Mr. Fulton, that’s as good as 
a play. Every toime. You wait till ye hear um. La’aff! — 
ye’ll die la’affin’. Git a move on there, Nonnie, fer Gawd’s 
sake, an’ put the supper on. Git busy. ’Tis murdher here 
with us the way we’re wantin’ a drink.” 

“What’s the matter with puttin’ them cocktails on roight 
now,” cried Pat McKennay. “I didn’t send ’em in to look 
at. Git ’em out, old lady. Don’t be holdin’ ’em fer to drink 
after we’re gawn away. . . 

They all laughed. 

“If cocktails be the drink of love,” said Bert (he had been 
a member of a Shakespearean Society in Greenock before he 
came out to Canada) “mix on.” 

They all laughed again. 

“Say, my, ain’t he the giddy goat, eh?” said Mrs. Mor- 
phy admiringly; and then to Robert, warmingly, “Listen, now! 
Don’t you git all awf. He is as funny as he kin be!” 


218 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Robert was now introduced to the whole company — except 
Mac. He had bowed this way and that, always from his sta- 
tion just inside the door, and his bows had irritated them 
all. He felt nervous and he looked supercilious. Dan growled 
something that was best unheard. Maggie set him down for a 
“No Englishman Need Apply.” Danny Finn didn’t fancy 
um. Pat McKennay ditto. Mac and Bert thought alike. 
Nonnie, as she spilled a trickle of gravy all along the floor, 
looking at him, was of the opinion that he had a lovely smoile, 
God bless um. And Mrs. Morphy, whose mind was solidly 
on the gin-bottle, didn’t think anything at all. “Git a move 
on, Nonnie,” she kept saying. “(Give her a hand now in 
Gawd’s name, Maggie.) Dra’aw in yer chairs, ladies an * gen- 
’lemen. Make yerselves at home. Yer healths!” 

While they were all taking their seats at the table, Miss Mc- 
Gee got up from her place and moved over to Mac and took 
him by the hand (she didn’t mind taking him by the hand) 
and drew him over to Robert. 

“Say,” she said, “I guess Mrs. Morphy got all awf, eh. 
She didn’t present ye.” And then, with just a grain of for- 
mality, she said, “See here, Mr. Fisher Macpherson, meet up 
with Mr. Robert Fulton.” 

Robert and Mac looked at one another. Possibly the fact 
that Mac limped so that he was unable to go back to the front, 
while Robert had never got even so far as the drill-ground 
in the Campus may have had something to do with it. Pos- 
sibly a certain half-bakedness together with the most complete 
.certainty in himself that Mac had may have exasperated Rob- 
ert unduly: undoubtedly the question that leaped to Mac’s mind 
the instant he set eyes on Robert, “What’s he doing here? 
W T hat’s he done for his country?” complicated the situation. 
They certainly didn’t like one another. They disliked each 
other very much. Miss McGee with a tremendous sinking of 
the heart felt that her only hope for the success of the eve- 
ning had been removed — it was as if you neatly drew out 
the linch-pin from a cart, and watched it collapse. 

“Come on,” she said, “I guess we’d best set down.” 

She didn’t give the slightest hint of defeat. She took hers, 
as she said, standing up. 

The first excuse for a toast was the announcement of Dan’s 
engagement to the widow. Dan, it appeared, had taken heart 
of grace that morning and confided this secret to Mrs. Mor- 
phy, and begged her to announce the fact at the supper-table 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


219 

as a means of “breaking the news to Maggie.” Mrs. Mor- 
phy was quite content to do this. She didn’t like Maggie, 
and neither did Miss McGee; and when Mrs. Morphy had 
confided the secret to Miss McGee before supper, they had 
agreed that it was a very good way of breaking the news. 
“Sure, Maggie Chambers should have had more dacency to 
her,” had been Mrs. Morphy’s remark: and Miss McGee had 
only rejoined to this, “Them as sows, reaps!” and had gone 
on laying the table. 

Now, when Mrs. Morphy upset this piece of news amongst 
the company, Mac “saved the pieces,” as Miss McGee said 
afterwards, by springing to his feet and toasting the bride and 
groom in a neat speech. He and Dan, he said, were about 
to leave Mrs. Morphy’s ever-hospitable roof-tree. He alluded 
to his hostess as the “Old Lady,” mentioned the good times 
they had had together, drew Bert, his best chum, into the 
story, lightly touched on all the various members of the com- 
pany . . . and before the table had realized where he was 
bound for, was in Bonny Scotland, extolling it up to the skies 
and saying nothing had ever been like it yet. This was the 
way Mac’s patriotism took him. The further away he got 
from Scotland, the more he loved it. Bert Baird likewise. 
Robert’s patriotism took him quite the other way — another 
source of antagonism between him and Mac. Robert made no 
demonstration whatever on St. George’s Day (whereas Mac 
went to dinners on St. Andrew’s Night and toasted his country 
and listened to the pipes and sang “Scots wha ha’e” with tears 
in his eyes) ; and, instead of dragging England into every con- 
versation and vowing there never was such a land before, Rob- 
ert Fulton was rather in the habit of disparaging his native 
land — passing over as negligible all its virtues and making its 
mistakes very plain, indeed . . . than which nothing is more 
unpopular: and therefore, during Mac’s speech, Robert’s ex- 
pression, though undesignedly, was eloquent. “He sure is one 
gen’leman bor’rn,” Miss McGee said to herself, watching him: 
she admired his scornful look. “Mac ain’t fer him” 

Mac sat down. And Maggie, whose nerves had been some- 
what set on edge by the news that had been broken to them, 
immediately and without any preamble let loose a remark about 
the widow and her feather-beds that — even in that company! 
— caused a blush to circulate slowly round the table. 
Pat McKennay, the seasoned cask, grew as red as any of 
them. 


220 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Fer Gawd’s sake, Maggie Chambers,” Mrs. Morphy said. 
“Are ye tellin’ us!” 

She meant “us married women.” With that curious sensi- 
tiveness of even the roughest man about his own wedding, 
Dan’s blush was pinker than anyone else’s. 

There was a pause. 

“Sure it’s the health of the broide an’ groom we’ll drink 
again, God bless ’em,” said Miss McGee, rising with her glass 
in her hand and saving the situation, “an’ then we’ll drink 
to Mac umself, good luck to um, an’ may God bring um back 
to us in the ind.” 

The table drank. It’s blush passed away. Harmony was 
restored. 

“Good luck to ye, Black Nor’rth,” Dan said, waving his 
glass in the direction of Miss McGee. “ ’Tis more sinse ye 
have than ye moight, considherin’ where ’tis ye come from.” 
Dan was from County “Ca’ar’rk.” 

They drank again — and yet again — and then Bert Baird 
got up with a few well-chosen jests in Scotch. And they all 
(with the exception of Maggie — and possibly Katie McGee — 
and certainly Robert — began to think what a nice thing life 
is. Toasts had been begun thus early in the evening in or- 
der that they might think this. They attacked the turkey and 
the goose and the two ducks and the fowl and Pat McKen- 
nay’s ice-cream with the zest and vigor that a preliminary 
cocktail, and three drinks will give. 

Robert sat completely silent in the midst of the merry- 
making. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk, but he couldn’t 
think of anything to say. It was as if the whole world had 
suddenly shrunk to the size of Mrs. Morphy’s kitchen, and 
as if all the things he had previously thought of as existing 
outside of these four walls, didn’t exist any more. If Rob- 
ert was perceptive, he had all the faults that attend percep- 
tiveness. He took on the tone of the company in which he 
found himself to such an extent that for the time being he 
was unable to see beyond the limitations of whatever com- 
pany that might be. At the same time he couldn’t, for the 
life of him, ever adapt himself or his conversation to those 
limitations, and so make himself agreeable. 

He sat completely silent, eating and drinking as little as 
he possibly could. He disliked Mrs. Morphy, sitting at the 
top of her own table drinking gin. He disliked poor Nonnie 
with a wisp of the hair that had once been golden hanging 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


221 


down her back; he disliked even more her husband, Danny, 
with his rakish air and his big laugh and his doggish jokes 
taken second-hand from last night’s Evening News. He de- 
tested Dan. It is one thing to try to write sympathetically of 
the manual worker and quite another to sit beside him at 
supper. Robert loathed the smell of Dan, the smell of manual 
labor imperfectly washed off, mingled with the smell of drink, 
ancient and modern, which he constantly exhaled: he also 
loathed the way he ate and drank — it made him sick to see 
Dan draw his hand across his mouth and wipe his knife off 
with his tongue. As for Maggie, she was frankly impossible 
and Robert’s only idea concerning her was to keep as far away 
as he could. Pat McKennay was like a beer-barrel. We know 
how Mac struck Robert. Bert seemed to him simply silly 
... he was thoroughly put out with Miss McGee for bring- 
ing him there at all: and he was not less put out with him- 
self for having consented to come. Never before had it been 
borne in upon him with the same pitiless clarity what a slat- 
ternly, down-at-heel, shabby, degraded place he lived in. Pen- 
elope’s Buildings suddenly seemed to him an impossible place. 
The food he was eating, touched as it had been by Nonnie 
Finn’s hands, seemed to him impossible food. A feeling of 
nausea crept over him. A horror of this kind of life, dirty, 
unkempt, with nothing to relieve its squalor but one or two 
half-bred, would-be-successful people like Mac and Bert Baird, 
gripped him. 

“Take another sloice, Mr. Fulton, eh,” said Mrs. Morphy. 

“No, thank you,” Robert said: it sounded to himself per- 
nickity in the company he was and he wished he could think 
of some other way of saying it. “No, thank you,” he said. 
“No more. ...” 

And then — feeling himself silly — in the wrong for the mo- 
ment — he smiled. 

“Faith, the bo’oy has the good smoile,” said Mrs. Morphy 
to herself: she was warmed with gin. “Fill up yer gla’ass 
then,” she went on, trying the universal language on him 
when she saw he helped himself to nothing. “Sure, ye’ve nothin’ 
to drink.” 

But Robert, unfortunately, didn’t drink. He had, in re- 
sponse to the toasts, put his lips to his glass: but he really 
didn’t drink — and thus was the last link cut between him and 
the company. / 

“Sure, ’tis the mother’s dar’rlin’ ye are then,” said Mrs. 


222 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Morphy. And she laughed. She meant no harm. It just 
came to her lips. But no sooner had she said it than the 
whole table laughed. They meant no harm. They had been 
enjoying their drinks, and enjoyment of drinks means easy 
laughter . . . and Robert had not taken their fancies. 

It was the end. 

“Idiot !” Robert said — furiously for once — to himself. “Why 
didn’t I stay upstairs and be miserable alone? I’m not fit 
company — even for this. . . 

“I was wrong to bring um, God help me,” Miss McGee 
said to herself — she hadn’t laughed — as she watched him. 
“Faith, what should he have to do with the loikes of us. I 
must git um away,” she thought. 

She was as good as her thought. As soon as supper was 
ended — and that was not before midnight — she pretended she 
had to go. Mac and Bert were lighting cigarettes and Pat 
McKennay’s cigar had been sending up curls of bluish smoke to 
the ceiling for quite a long while when she invented her clever 
excuse that took no one in, and got up in her place. “Will 
ye come with me, eh,” she said, turning casually to Robert. 
“Ye’ve ear’rly hours in the mor’rnin’.” 

And, perfectly alive to and as entirely ignoring, all the 
innuendoes that would accompany their thus departing togeth- 
er, she went across the court with Robert — and they went slow- 
ly up-stairs. 

“Ye’re weary-toired,” she said, “an’ ye’ve not had the toime, 
an’ how should ye! I was wrong to take ye, Mr. Fulton. I’d 
oughter’ve known we’re not loike you. I been used with that 
koind of a loife all me days pretty near an’ it seems a’alroight 
to me. But you’re used with some different koind of loife 
. . . I never oughter’ve brought ye in ut. I’m sawry 

She stopped. 

To say that Robert was conscience-stricken is to say noth- 
ing. He had had no idea of how his behavior had struck 
Miss McGee, and now he felt as if nothing in the world would 
be too much for him to do to reassure her and comfort her. 
As she stood opposite him with the dim gas-jet on her land- 
ing shining down on her, she looked haggard somehow and, 
not exactly old, but with a premonition of what she would 
look like when she would be old. It might have been the 
effect of the light — but it seemed to Robert as if there were 
a tragic look in her eyes. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


223 

“I’m sawry she repeated. “I’d oughter’ve knowed better’n 
that.” 

“Oh, Miss McGee,” Robert said, “Miss McGee ...” 

He stopped. For the life of him he couldn’t think of any- 
thing to say. 

“ ’Tis the tough loife I been used with sinst Ma’a was took,” 
Miss McGee said. She stopped a moment and then went on. 
“I was brought up good I want you to understand, Mr. Ful- 
ton, an’ I’ve kep’ meself good an’ straight sinst, be-lieve me. 
But it’s a tough lot I been amongst, an’ it’s gittin’ worse. 
I’m sloidin’ down-hill, Mr. Fulton, God help me, an’ I can’t 
help meself.” 

She stopped. 

“Don’t ye think I’m gittin’ after Mrs. Morphy there,” she 
said. “I’m not. She’s as straight as they make ’em. An’ 
Nonnie Finn is one other good soul. I want you to under- 
stand that. But,” she said, “them others . . .” 

She stopped. 

“Mac’s a’alroight, I guess,” she said, looking wistfully at 
Robert. “I guess Mac’s a’alroight, eh? He ain’t the gen’lemen 
loike what ye’ve been used with, p’raps. He’s the same’s us, 
I guess, only he means to lift umself up out of us, the way 
Tim Garry an’ Andrew Glassridge done. An’ Bert Baird’s 
another,” she said; “but you . . . you . . .” 

She stopped again. 

“Miss McGee,” Robert said, “don’t talk like that. I’m no 
one. I’m nothing at all. If you knew,” he said — and he 
stopped. 

There was a pause. 

“I’m just one of you,” Robert went on after the pause. 
“You don’t know how I want to be one of you,” he said. 
“And I am. I am. If you knew everything — ” he stopped 
again — “perhaps you wouldn’t even ...” 

There was another pause. A long one this time. 

“Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said, “ye may want to be one 
of us. An’ ef ye say ye do, I guess ye do. But,” she said, 
“ye can’t be. Ye never will be. Ye’re made on the one 
plan,” Miss McGee said, “an’ we’re made on thd other. Mac 
ain’t the same’s you. I see ut. No more’s Bert there. They’re 
on the bias, every one of ’em — goin’ cheap — seconds . . . when 
it comes to you.” 

She stopped. 

“You’re ” she said. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


224 

And after a minute she went on in quite a different tone, 
“I guess God there knows His job. He made ye the way 
He felt loike, an’ ye’re made that way. We have to stick ut.” 

She stood looking up at him for a moment and — there was 
no doubt of it now — the look in her eyes was tragic. 

“I’m sawry,” she said. “Good night.” 

And she was gone. 


CHAPTER XXXI 

M AC’S goin’-away par’rty (and, as it turned out, Dan’s, 
too) was the last drop in Miss McGee’s cup of dis- 
content with life. This cup had been filling up for a 
long time, mostly without Miss McGee’s knowledge. She had 
always tried to keep a brave face towards life, she had done 
her best to joke about misfortune and say it was a gift of 
God and therefore must be all right; but, for eleven years — 
since old Mrs. McGee died — Katie McGee had found life 
an up-hill piece of work. At Mrs. McGee’s death she had 
what, if she had been in another stratum of life, would have 
been called “a nervous break-down.” And it was because 
of this, and because of her brother-in-law, Tim Garry’s per- 
sistence on her having a holiday, that she had gone to Doll 
Weltman’s in New York and spent the winter and spring 
months of 1906 with her. Doll had been kind; very kind. 
Mrs. McGee had been good to her when she had come, Dolly 
McSwayne, an orphaiy girl, from Ireland: she had actually 
lived with the McGee’s some years, and had a sort of sisterly 
feeling therefore to Mary and Katie McGee; and she had seen 
her way to pay back her debts. She had cosseted Miss Mc- 
Gee, and fed her on innumerable glasses of milk and raw 
eggs, and, later on, on as many beefsteaks as she could as- 
similate. Mrs. Weltman had taken Katie’s breakfast up to 
her in bed herself, she had taken extra cream on her account, 
she had insisted on doctors and tonics and electrical treatment 
for the neuritis in the arm ... no expense had been spared 
in the Weltman household to make Katie McGee fit for her 
job again: and Miss McGee, in recognition of this (not men- 
tioned to the Weltman household, however), had “remembered” 
Belle and Polly in her will. “Uncle’s mooney” was to be di- 
vided between them— with a little legacy subtracted for Nel- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


225 

lie. “I’m not one to take without payin’,’’ Miss McGee had 
said to herself many times. “I’ll pay me way after I’m dead 
ef I can’t do ut whoile I’m aloive.” It had been a great sat- 
isfaction to Miss McGee to say this to herself; and it had 
been with an even greater satisfaction — amounting to joy — 
that she had visited a lawyer’s office in order to indicate her 
v wishes as to the apportioning of her money. “Uncle was good 
to me,” she said, “an’ I’m goin’ to be good to somebody else.” 
And she rejected with scorn Mrs. Barclay’s suggestion (the 
Barclays by the right of the age of their friendly patronage were 
let into the secrets of the family McGee) that she should put 
Uncle’s mooney in one entire lump into an annuity and so make 
the best of it for herself. “I loike to think,” she had said in 
response to this, “that me Dutch cousins an’ me own sister’s 
choild is goin’ to have somethin’ left ’em be Katie McGee.” 
And the fact of this definite substantial remembrance of her- 
self that she would have to leave behind her was a comfort 
to her in many a trudge to a thankless day’s work and home 
again. 

This nervous break-down in Miss McGee was the sign evi- 
dently of some definite weakness in her nervous system. Peo- 
ple whose nervous systems are what they should be don’t have 
nervous break-downs. Miss McGee, however, had ample ex- 
cuse for such a thing — if excuses are needed. She had been 
almost sole nurse to Mrs. McGee through a long and ter- 
rible illness — cancer. All through the illness there had been 
wearing anxiety about money. Where was the money to come 
from to keep her mother alive, with every possible alleviation 
for her agony? Tim Garry was willing to contribute; but 
Tim hadn’t been as well off in 1906 as he was in 1916; he had 
had a growing family to keep and educate — it was impossible 
for him to give as much as Mrs. McGee needed to have. The 
McGee savings were nothing at all ; where were savings to come 
from with one woman going out cleaning and the other go- 
ing out sewing by the day? They could afford no Nurse: 
and even could a hospital have been found to take in such a 
case as Mrs. McGee’s, both she and her daughter passionately 
set their hearts against any hospital at all. Mrs. Garry came 
and stayed for days at a time, and loyally took -her share 
in the nursing of her mother: and Rose — then just a “halfling” 
as old Mrs. McGee used to call her, kept things running in the 
Garry home. Rose had been as unselfish and as self-reliant 
at thirteen as she was at twenty-four: and Mrs. Garry, in the 


226 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


tiny shack where Mrs. McGee and Katie lived on the con- 
fines of Regalia, had no anxiety about Garryton (not the big 
important Garryton in which the Garrys lived now, but a pre- 
cursor of the same) when she was away from it. Things went 
on flourishingly with Rose at their head. The children were 
being cared for, Father was being fed, the house was being 
kept clean — and if Rose was missing her Convent schooling, 
she could make up for it when the time of stress and strain 
was over. Mrs. Garry came and stayed, sometimes for weeks 
at a time, and whenever she did this, Katie went to work 
and gained a little extra money. Her customers were good to 
her — she only went at that time to the old tried ones — they 
let her come late and go early; and Mrs. Barclay especially, 
in those days of sorrow (and this was the link that bound Miss 
McGee so irrevocably to her) had been goodness itself. She 
had sent constant supplies of good nourishing food suitable 
for the invalid; soups, strong and kindly, jellies cool and 
soothing, light sponge-cakes to tempt the sick w r oman — togeth- 
er with magazines that could be read aloud to her, a down 
pillow to tuck in at the back of her neck (which Katie used 
to this day) a light quilt that would keep her warm without 
burdening her. Mrs. Barclay at that time had been what 
Miss McGee could never forget; and, even now, in the midst 
of one of Mrs. Barclay’s most infuriating diatribes, when a 
sharp retort was on the tip of Katie McGee’s tongue, she would 
pull herself up short. “Sure, she was good to Ma’a,” she 
would think to herself. “Let her ta’alk.” 

It had been a long siege of pain and misery, that last ill- 
ness of Mrs. McGee. Katie, even yet, could never come to 
certain turns in certain roads, without the old sick feeling of 
apprehension coming over her that she had had eleven years 
before at the end of some of her working days. “What if 
somethin’ had happened to Ma’a while she was out! What if 
Ma’a was — dead — when she got home?” At those turns in 
the road, when she came to them now, eleven years later, she 
remembered as if it were yesterday how she had suddenly broken 
into a run — and run — and run — and come at last to the poor 
little cottage, out of breath, exhausted; and then waited at the 
door, silent, too frightened to turn the handle and walk in. 
Those had been terrible days — prolonged up to the breaking 
point: and when poor old Mrs. McGee had breathed her last 
and was at peace under the soil of her adopted land, Miss 
McGee had gone, as she expressed it, “all to pieces”: and in 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


227 


the breaking-up of her nervous system, she had exposed the 
flaw in her make. She hadn’t been ill exactly — unless neu- 
ritis in the arm be illness: but she had ceased to care for life. 
What was there to look forward to now that Ma’a was gone! 
How could she bear to come home all the rest of her life to 
an empty room somewhere, where Ma’a was not — and where 
no one else was either. What kind of life was it that she 
had to look forward to, at thirty-five, with nothing and no 
one of her own to care for her, and for her to love and cher- 
ish in return? Miss McGee had for her mother the peculiar 
love that unmarried women sometimes have for their mothers. 
She retained for her the child’s veneration, mingled with the 
later feeling that the mother had grown helpless and old and 
needed protection and shelter from the very one she used to 
cherish and shelter herself. “Ma’a was the good woman, sure,” 
Miss McGee was never tired of repeating to herself. She 
gave Ma’a some of the love she ought to have given to a child 
of her own. She thought of Mrs. McGee in a sort of way 
as if she had been a child of her own and in those last dread- 
ful days, the old woman in her helplessness and pain, had 
clung to Katie as a sort of protector and mother. When this 
clinging was over and Miss McGee was all alone, she had 
felt, as I say, as if life were over for her, as if she could 
face no more of it: and if it hadn’t been for Tim Garry and his 
good-nature and his money, Katie McGee might very likely 
have “gone under” with so many of the rest. She had pulled 
through, however, by the help of the kind offices of Doll Welt- 
man and her nourishing food, and by the help, too, of the 
brightness and youth of Belle and Polly. Joe, too, had been 
a factor. Miss McGee had liked Joe Weltman and his jokes 
(as much as Robert disliked them when they were retailed to 
him) and she had liked — loved — the big strange bewildering 
beauty — and ugliness — of New York. It had been a sort of 
revelation to her, this gigantic city, full of noise and rush and 
color, with buildings such as she had never seen before, some of 
them towering up into New York’s clear unsmoked sky, and 
some large and broad as if the land they were built on cost noth- 
ing, and decorated on the outside as if they were meant to be 
palaces for the gods. Miss McGee used to walk up and down 
Fifth Avenue (when the glasses of milk and the raw eggs had 
done their work) as if she never could be tired of it. She had 
gazed at the palatial residences (so she termed them to herself) 
“Great, eh!” and at the wonderful shops, full of every luxury 


228 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


and beauty that woman’s desire could covet for itself. Yes, 
Miss McGee had loved New York. Ever after she had 
towards that city the sort of feeling we have for any place 
where we have regained strength — and renewed ourselves. New 
York had brought back to Miss McGee with its strangeness 
and its novelty and its fierce rush of life, the desire to live; 
and always it was associated in her mind with this desire to 
live. She felt as if the very stones of the streets of New 
York were permeated with life; as if it had cried to her as she 
was walking on it, “Live, Katie McGee!” She was corre- 
spondingly grateful to it. 

It hadn’t been only Mrs. McGee’s death that had wrought 
havoc on her. The departure of Mr. Mitt had had its share 
in the break-down. With the death of her mother Miss McGee 
had seen herself for the first time as a woman out in the 
world without a parent, and with the departure of Mr. Mitt 
she had also seen herself as an elderly woman out in the 
world without the chance of a man. She had slipped between 
the two homes — the parent’s home and the husband’s home — * 
and she saw herself henceforth for ever and ever without 
any home at all: for what kind of home is the one a single 
woman makes for herself and comes back to sadly in the 
evening! Miss McGee, at that time, eleven years ago, had 
faced the facts of her future life; and, before New York and 
Doll Weltman’s steaks lent their artificial stimuli, Miss McGee 
felt that it would be impossible for her to tread any further 
this mockery of a life that lay before her. She wanted a 
home of her own — a husband — not to go out working by the 
day any more . . . she just wanted the old eternal thing 
that the woman always has wanted and always will want: 
and she couldn’t get it. 

She recovered. She surmounted her nervous crisis, and she 
came back to Regalia in due time, ready to take up her work 
again. She took it up, made some kind of a shelter for her- 
self in Penelope’s Buildings, regained her old customers, made 
new ones, set her life on its new basis as firmly as she could 
— and wiped the past off her mind. 

She wiped it off — but not quite. She did her best not to 
think, but she couldn’t help thinking, sometimes. There was 
one thing too that, try as she might to wipe it off, wouldn’t 
go. It stayed, written apparently in indelible ink. She tried 
not to see this writing on her soul, but the more she tried 
not to see it the clearer it got. Had the Garrys done what 


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229 

they should, she — Katie McGee — might have married Mr. Mitt. 
Here was the crux of the whole business. The plate of cold 
turkey was a pretext and a pretense — the real reason for Katie 
McGee’s anger, the thing she couldn’t — and never would — 
forgive the Garrys was that they hadn’t come to her help in 
the Mitt business, and made it possible and even profitable, for 
Mr. Mitt to wait. Had Tim Garry come forward, this was 
what Miss McGee said to herself, and talked with Mitt, had 
Mary Garry wanted Katie McGee to be married, as she should 
have wanted it — Mitt never would have gone away. But the 
Garrys hadn’t cared for Mitt, they hadn’t thought he would 
be a “good” match for Katie — he had no money — no profes- 
sion — he wasn’t a Catholic — they had done nothing at ail. 
They had let Mitt go without a word. Kind as they had been 
about Mrs. McGee, nobly as Mrs. Garry had taken her part 
in the long illness and the terrible death, brotherly as Tim* 
Garry had been after the death and generously as he had 
come to his sister-in-law’s assistance — Katie couldn’t forgive 
them. If they had helped her it was a married w T oman she 
would have been this day. She couldn’t forget it. She couldn’t 
forgive it. And, after her return from New York, though she 
had gone for some years regularly enough to the Garry’s house, 
she had eagerly seized on the first possible occasion for taking 
offense — a plate of cold turkey did as well as anything else — 
and she had quarreled furiously, irrevocably (as she thought) 
and for ever. She never wanted to see Mary again, or Tim 
either. They had deserted her when and where she had 
most needed them. And now see what had come of it. 

Mac’s goin’-away par’rty seemed a little thing to set her 
cup of discontent with life brimming. But it did. The cup 
was full before the par’rty, and it needed only a drop to make 
it overflow. The par’rty was the drop. After the evening at 
Mrs. Morphy’s, had you searched the earth you couldn’t have 
found a more wretched creature than Katie McGee. 

She did nothing by halves. If she loved — she loved. If 
she hated — she hated. If she felt she couldn’t do her work — 
she couldn’t do it. After the unlucky par’rty that had been 
productive of so much dismay to so many people, Miss McGee 
felt it would be impossible for her to go on dressmaking any 
more. She suddenly felt a disgust at her profession, she felt 
(what she often felt at moments and for moments before) 
as if she had spent an utterly wasted life in making over 
other people’s gowns, and as if that part of her life must come 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


230 

to an end. She just felt that she never could make over a 
gown again — as if a needle and she must henceforth be 
strangers. 

It was all very well to feel that — but what to do? Miss 
McGee, as she walked to her work and home again, thought 
and thought. She went over in her mind all she could — and 
couldn’t — do. She racked her brain to find some talent she 
might turn to and make money with. “Sure ye’re not the fool, 
Kitty,” she would say to herself. “There’s somethin' ye kin 
do. Get busy.” 

Such admonitions sounded well and did her good perhaps in 
keeping up her spirit. But they didn’t take her very far. What 
could she do? She could do just one thing and that was, go 
out sewing by the day. It was too late for her to try and set 
up in business of her own — and besides, that needs capital. 
She couldn’t get a place in anyone else’s business because her 
personality would have made it impossible for her to keep 
the job; the artistic streak that made her able to do what she 
did do would also have got between her and any “bawss” and 
cloven them in sunders. There was nothing for it but to go 
on as she was doing — nothing between her and her last day 
on earth but to plod wearily to a customer in the morning and 
to plod more wearily home at night with a dollar and a half 
in her pocket. She couldn’t raise her prices because the cus- 
tomers wouldn’t “stand for it”: she might think herself lucky 
if she went on getting customers and dollars and a half till 
the end. 

By nature Miss McGee didn’t care for dressmaking. She was 
interested in it. She had the true artist’s feeling towards it; 
possibly, if she had had a better technical training, she might 
even have liked it. For she had a flair for clothes. Quite 
extraordinarily she could tell what the fashion was going to 
be and where any given thing was good “stoyle” or bad. So 
marked was this sense and so clear her eye for “line” that 
Mrs. Glassridge herself often condescended to take her to the 
tailor’s or to the smart Importer’s where she bought her Paris 
clothes “so she could have McGee tell the folks.” The folks 
didn’t like it — how should they? But the dollar-and-a-half 
Katie McGee “put it over them,” as Mrs. Glassridge also 
said, “every time.” She didn’t know how she knew: she just 
knew. Something in her said “Fix that so it cur’rves around,” 
or “Ease there a particle” — and, lo, the effect was attained. 
Had Katie McGee had her chance — had she emerged from a 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


231 

Paris atelier instead of out of a twopenny-halfpenny dress- 
making stunt in Regalia city — she would have been an artist in 
clothes : and then she would have liked dressmaking. As it 
was, this talent of hers was more a sorrow than a pleasure. 
It told her what ought to be without giving her the power to 
do the thing herself. For, though she could point out where 
a given finished article should be altered so that a desired 
effect might be produced, she was unable, with the imperfect 
training which was all she had received, to evolve out of a 
clear sky of stuff an original creation. She made a try for it, 
•and sometimes it came off . . . but more often it didn’t, 
and then that was a black day for Katie McGee. She had the 
Reeling of an artist to the thing she wished to create. If it 
came off she loved it. If it didn’t come off she hated it to 
such an extent that she could have murdered it on the spot. 
“It don't do,” she would cry in despairing tones, “it ain't 
cornin’ out.” “Don’t fuss yourself all up, McGee,” the cus- 
tomer would reply, “don’t worry. It’s a’alroight, I guess.” And 
so to the customer’s imperfect eye, perhaps it was. This kind 
of consolation never had any effect on Miss McGee. It only 
made her feel that this world is a world of mostly fools. 
“I’ll never cut in a bit of good stuff again, so I won’t, God 
help me,” she would say, walking home after one of these 
failures to attain the ideal. “ ’Tis a croime gittin’ after what 
ye can’t do.” And before Robert had given her something else to 
think of she had spent whole evenings wondering what she 
should have done to get some effect she hadn’t been able to 
get, and worrying herself sick over something her customer 
had considered “perfectly sweet.” 

It was her repeated failure in embodying her ideal that had 
gradually undermined her interest in her profession. She 
wanted to produce “on her own,” as she said, the beautiful 
simple lines of the best French frocks, she wanted to get 
by her own spear and bow their perfection of cut and their 
aroma of style — and she couldn’t Whenever she saw at Mrs. 
Glassridge’s or at the houses of any other of her “good” cus- 
tomers, those lovely little outgrowths of some complex French 
intelligence, some of the feeling that haunted Robert as he 
stood before “Sleep” crept into her mind. She wanted to put 
herself into the frocks she made; and when she couldn’t — for 
to put ourselves into anything is the last proof of our skill and 
the last evidence of our maturity — she felt a sort of sick 
disgust with her whole profession. As the years went on she felt 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


232 

less and less interest in what she did, because she couldn’t 
nohow do ut, as she said. When she first began to “go out” 
she had detested the everlasting “making over” with hardly 
ever a chance to cut into a new piece of stuff ; but as time went 
on and it was gradually borne in on her that she would never 
be able to “create,” she began to feel an actual relief when 
her customers turned over to her some last year’s gown to 
be “remodeled.” “I guess I kin fix that so ut looks good 
a’alroight,” she would say to herself, and that feeling that is 
the reverse of the ecstasy of creation — the solid satisfaction 
in decent work done — would take hold of her as she cut 
and snipped. “Guess that’s goin’ to look foine,” she would 
say to herself, basting away, “ef ut is old stoyle made over.” 

It is all very well to adapt oneself, but an indefinitely pro- 
longed adaptation down-hill all the way is apt to lower vitality 
in the end. Interest, after all, is what keeps us alive. Miss 
McGee, not expecting much from life, especially after the 
termination of the Mitt episode, had resolutely set out to make 
the best of a bad job; and what gaiete de malheur she pos- 
sessed had evolved out of that. But — at every feminine core 
you find a man, cherchez-le ! — Robert’s advent had broken down 
this gaiete de malheur . . . and the malheur itself, behind, 
that Miss McGee had been pushing back for eleven years, had 
broken through. It had broken through and forced itself on 
Miss McGee’s attention; she suddenly realized that she was 
very unhappy: and when we realize that we are unhappy. 

Had Robert Fulton kept out of her life Miss McGee might 
have gone on to the end as she had gone on for the eleven years 
since her mother’s death. She might, not discontentedly and 
certainly not despairingly, have gone on altering and repairing 
the wardrobes of her ladies; taking, except perhaps for an 
occasional pang of quite human envy, the beautiful gowns of 
Glassridge and Co. as God-sent things in which she had no 
part, afid accepting the substantial kindness of Mrs. Barclay 
as a pleasant change in the monotony of life. But with Robert 
something new had come into Miss McGee’s life. A hope. Of 
what ? — it is impossible to say. She had felt for Robert, almost 
as soon as she had set eyes on him, a new sort of feeling 
that was compounded of a sister’s affection, and a mother’s 
devotion, and a comrade’s loyalty, and a woman’s love. He 
had slipped into her purposeless life like something — that 
opened up vistas of Miss McGee hardly knew what. She had 
felt for him and his accent and the things he said and the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


233 

way he said them, for his appearance, his smile, the look in 
his eyes, his very way of holding out his hand, something 
that she had never felt before. She realized in Robert some- 
thing she had never had the opportunity to meet — but something 
that she had always dimly wished to meet. He was connected 
in some inscrutable way with her desire to make beautiful 
gowns. He was caught up and all entangled with her desire 
for beauty — for the lovely in life. With her intimacy with 
Robert all that she had put behind her, as she thought so 
successfully — her longing for happiness, and beauty, and life 
as it is not but as it ought to be — blazed up in her heart: 
and with this blazing up of things that she had thought 
were dead ashes, all the old unhappy longings that she thought 
she had done with blazed up too. She felt — and all winter 
long she had been feeling and thrusting the feeling down — 
as she had felt eleven years before when she had lost her 
mother and Mitt, and with them her chance of a home, her 
last hope of any position in life; she felt in 1917 as she had 
felt in 1906, that she had not been fairly treated, that the 
beauty she longed for was beyond her reach; that perhaps it 
didn’t exist at all, that anyway she was useless, no good at her 
work, no good as a woman. What was she — a poor little barren 
old maid (virginity be darned!) a bit of wreckage in the world, 
only fit for the scrap-heap — to be made over again somewhere 
and made over quite different. 

All these things Miss McGee had felt during the winter of 
1917. They had surged up in her on the night of the concert. 
Her ecstasy as the bo’oy in the velvet jackut played was shot 
through with the sense that the harmonies he threw on the air 
were painful — unbearable in their beauty. And they were 
unbearable because their beauty was transitory and it was 
what her soul was yearning for — to keep. In a minor degree 
she had felt the same at the Po-ut’s lecture. She had felt it 
sometimes even as Robert read his Papers to her in his pleasant 
voice. What would not Miss McGee have given to have a voice 
like that, to read like that, to have an education like that to 
make use of! Had Robert looked up oftener than he did 
while he was reading he would have seen tears in Miss McGee’s 
eyes — hot scalding tears of misery and a sort of envy that had 
no harm in it. He might have seen in her face a yearning for 
life as it ought to be. He didn’t look up. Miss McGee 
pushed back her tears. But at each repetition of the longing 
“it” grew stronger, more unbearable, more difficult to push 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


234 

down. . . . After Mac’s goin’-away par’rty her cup of life 
brimmed over into open discontent. 

“I’ll not go on the way I’m doin’,” Miss McGee said to 
herself the morning after the fiasco the par’rty had been. “God 
save us, ain’t I slaved enough for them women there? Can’t 
I git out?” As she said “git out” it seemed to her that she 
was an animal caught in a trap. She had to get out. She 
must get out. She could no longer go to Wellston Road and 
Graceburgh Mansions and The Queen Mary Apartments and 
Tompkins’ Avenue and sit and rip and think and sew up 
again and try on and take off and wear out her brain trying 
to make one thing out of another. “I’ll not do ut,” she cried, 
“ ’tis murder.” And then a little later on she cried again, 
“God in Heaven, Katie McGee, ain’t ye got nothin' in ye? 
Brace up, for the love o’ Mike, an’ git a move on. . . .” 

She thought and thought what she could do. All the time 
she was awake she turned and twisted her brain and tried 
to make it over into another brain as if it was a customer’s gown. 
“What could she do!” “How was she to get out of the trap — • 
quit V* These were the questions that perplexed her. It 
was not till the night she went to see Mac off at the “depot” 
that she found, as she thought, the answer to her question. 
“Gawd,” she said then to herself, gazing at a man she hadn’t 
seen for years and years. “Kitty McGee, ain’t ye the fool! 
Mickey Ryan’ll foind ye the job.” She felt the answer come 
sailing into her mind as a swan turns the curve of an inlet 
and comes swimming down the lake. “Ef I ain’t forgot Mickey!” 
she said over and over to herself. “Mickey Ryan,” she said 
aloud, going up to her friend and twitching him by the sleeve, 
“ye ain’t forgot Kitty McGee, eh?” And she was not sur- 
prised, she just took it for granted when the big man turned 
to her and said in his big hearty voice, “Forgot ye! D’ye 
think I’ve forgot me everla’astin’ hopes o’ hell I” They laughed 
together, and then Katie, in an eager unsteady kind of voice 
asked Mickey if she might come and see him — at his office: 
she had — had something to ask him. “Sure, come,” Mickey 
said. “Come on, Kitty McGee, wheniver ye feel loike ut.” 

Katie McGee felt that her fortune was made in that big 
fat voice. “I’ll ’phone ye up, Mickey Ryan,” she said: and 
then she said in herself, “An’ sure now I’ll be hurryin’ home 
an’ tell Mr. Fulton.” Robert was mixed up in her every plan of 
life. As she went almost running home to Penelope’s Build- 
ings her blood seemed to bound in her. The bleak wind that she 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


235 

had minded so much on her way to the depot hardly seemed 
to be blowing at all. “I guess it’s tur’med war’rmer some,” 
she said to herself, with her foot on her stairway. And then, 
bounding through her, went the thought, “Mickey’ll fix me. 
Mickey Ryan’ll foind me the job.” The spotless handkerchief 
that Mac had so very properly waved from his departing train 
seemed now to Katie McGee not of the slightest importance as 
compared with her reincarnated Mickey Ryan. “Sure, ain’t 
ye been the fool-woman . . . !” she said to herself once more, 
feeling round and round her wrist-bag for her latch-key on 
the threshold of her door. She made up her mind that she 
would tell it all to Robert. 


CHAPTER XXXII 

I T was daunting to open her door and find Robert peacefully 
sitting by the fire reading a book. It was nice to find him 
there at all of course, but Miss McGee could have dispensed 
with the book. 

“Mac’s awf,” she said, coming in and shutting the door. 

“Is he?” said Robert. 

He only very reluctantly raised his eyes from his book. It 
happened to be Samuel Butler’s Note-books, and he was en- 
joying it, and it was a considerable come-down to descend to. 
Mac. 

“Sure he’s awf, the poor bo’oy,” Miss McGee said. “He’s 
gawn in the wor’rld, God bless um, an’ Gawd knows ef 
ever we’ll see um again.” 

She removed her hat and stood with it in her hand, while 
with the other hand she felt carefully all over her hair to 
make sure, as women do, that it was fit for the public eye. 

Robert said nothing further. Manners obliged him to put 
his book down on his knee, but he kept a finger inserted in 
the place where he had been reading in the hope that he 
might be able to return there; and now and again he cast 
his eyes downwards in a longing sort of way. 

“There was me seein’ um awf,” said Miss McGee unneces- 
sarily, “an’ Nonnie Finn was there, the good soul that she is. 
An’ Danny Finn come with Pat McKennay that he’s seekin’ the 
job with. (Danny’s on the bum, an’ he’ll take the job where 
he kin git ut, bad luck to um!) An’ Bert was there with his 
joke, you be sure. An’,” Miss McGee continued in a significant 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


236 

tone, approaching the inner soul of her subject, “there was one 
there I ain’t saw this long toime pa’ast.” She paused, and then 
in her usual tone she went on, “An’ there was one or two 
gen’lemen out of Mac’s awfus, I guess. He's the whoite-haired 
bo’oy, Mac is, sure. An’ me brother-in-law was there too. I 
guess he thinks Mac’s the bawss . . . 

She paused. 

“Oh,” said Robert. “Oh, indeed.” It wasn’t stimulating, but 
he wanted to get back to Butler. 

“Sure I ain’t saw Tim Garry in years,” Miss McGee re- 
marked. 

“Haven’t you?” said Robert. 

“I ain’t saw Tim,” Miss McGee said impressively — as if 
Robert cared! — “not sinst me sister an’ me scrapped over that 
bir’rd there.” Miss McGee stopped short as if something had 
shot her. “I want them Garrys to understand I ain’t a beggar ” 
she said in a war-like tone. 

Robert did fervently hope that it was not written in the 
note-books of the gods that he was once more to hear the cold 
turkey episode. Of all Miss McGee’s rigmaroles this was 
the one, perhaps, that he could least bear. He had heard it so 
often. He was sick of it, and anyway, even at the first time 
of hearing, he had never seen anything in it. Why shouldn’t 
Mrs. Garry send her sister a plate of turkey if it was convenient 
so to do? (His own sensations at the advent of the Glassridge 
pie occupied another plane in his sensations.) He now sat en- 
tirely silent. He thought this might be his best chance of escape. 
And, apparently, it was written in the divine note-books that 
he was not to hear, for in a moment or so Miss McGee said 
in her usual tone, “Tim Garry’s gained weight some sinst I seen 
um.” 

And then, after a second, she turned and went into her 
bed-room, and Robert could hear her moving about and putting 
away her out-door things, taking off her rubbers and chang- 
ing her boots. He once more opened his book and cast him- 
self therein. 

“ ’Twas Mickey Ryan was the friend I ain’t saw this long 
toime pa’ast,” Miss McGee observed, when she had put away 
her out-door gear and had come into the living-room once 
more. 

“Oh,” said Robert again. This time he didn’t even raise 
his eyes from his book. He realized it was rude, but he 
didn’t care. He wanted to read. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


237 

“An’ Mickey’s no loighter than he’d used to be,” Miss Mc- 
Gee remarked, siting down at the other side of the fire, and 
spreading her feet on the fender to warm. She twitched her 
nose with an odd little movement she sometimes had. “Sure, 
I guess Mickey Ryan’ll git away with his two hundred pound 
a’alroight,” she said. 

Robert closed his book. It was no good, and he saw it was 
no good. With the air of a saint gone slightly sour he placed 
the book on the table, crossed his feet on the fender beside 
Miss McGee’s feet, leant back in his chair and resigned him- 
self to fate. 

“I kin see Mickey now,” pursued Miss McGee, “I kin see 
um now, the red-headed glory of a bo’oy that he was. Scrappin’, 
God help um, from mornin’ to noight an’ his Da’a gittin’ after 
um with a stick. . . .” 

She gazed retrospectively into the fire. 

“Them Ryans is hot stuff, you bet,” she said. And then, 
with a touch of pride, she added, “ ’Tis the divils comes out 
of Ireland, Mr. Fulton, ye kin bet yer sweet loife.” 

Robert just went on saying nothing. He felt no drawing 
to the Ryans. And, to tell the truth, he wasn’t wanting to 
hear about Ireland — a country he had no great sympathy with. 
Robert hadn’t really half as big a mind as Miss McGee — whose 
desires embraced the world. Robert’s mind accepted certain 
things and definitely shut out others. But Katie McGee’s 
mind was made of some elastic material, and the more you 
had given her to put into it, the more it would have 
stretched. 

“I guess they done themselves good, them Ryans there,” 
Miss McGee went on after a period of silence. “Ole Pa’a, 
God save us, couldn’t put the letter to’s name when fir’rst 
he come out. An’ look at Mickey to-day, the gall of um.” Miss 
McGee stopped, but this time for emphasis. “With his woife,” 
she went on, “an’ the ly-mousine she got, an’ the dawg there 
in the front seat, an’ the Chaw-fure to droive an’ all. My,” 
Miss McGee went on, lowering her voice a trifle, “ye couldn’t 
git yer moind around what Biddy Ryan there ain’t got.” She 
paused again and then remarked, “Ef ’tain’t her husband’s love. 
An’ sure pop, Mr. Fulton, she ain’t got that.” 

Robert felt himself forced to say something. He said, “Hasn’t 
she?” And then, feeling that to be inadequate, he added, “It 
seems a pity, doesn’t it?” He cared no more about Biddy and 
Mickey Ryan than if they had been troglodytes — and neither 


238 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

archaeology nor anthropology was one of Robert Fulton’s 
“things.” 

For quite a long time Miss McGee remained wrapped up 
in her own reflections. She stayed silent so long indeed that 
Robert was just considering the possibility of putting out a 
stealthy hand and drawing his book nearer — when she spoke 
again. 

“Mickey Ryan’s made his, I guess,” was all she said when 
she did speak: she was paving the way to mentioning to 
Robert that she hoped Mickey would also make hers. 

Robert sighed. 

“What does this Mr. Ryan do?” he asked. “I mean, what 
is his work?” He saw that he would have to hear and he 
thought the shorter way might be to ask the definite question. 

“G-r-a-f-t spells gra’aft,” said Miss McGee calmly. “Michael 
Ryan, take ut from me, Mr. Fulton, eh, is one boodler bor’m.” 
She gazed into the fire. “Them Ryans knows the way to 
git in one on the ground-floor, be-lieve me,” she said. 

Robert felt less and less drawn to Mickey. 

“Are they old friends of yours?” he said. 

“I ain’t saw Mickey in years,” Miss McGee replied, “not 
till this noight. But him and me was the kids together a’al- 
roight. Ole Pa’a Ryan had the lean-to there in Ma’a’s back- 
yar’rd.” 

She was silent. For a frail moment Robert thought the 
Ryans had gone the way of everything — to oblivion: and 
then Miss McGee burst out worse than ever. 

“Say, my, ef you’d laid eyes on Ma’a, Mr. Fulton,” she 
said, “ye wouldn’t want me to tell you why ’twas Pa’a Ryan 
kep’ the stair swep’ fer her. 

She stopped short and her eyes filled with tears. 

“Oh my, them was the good toimes,” she said: “ef ye’d 
saw Ma’a, ye wouldn’t wonder at me keepin’ ta’alkin’. She 
was good ...” 

“I’m sure she was,” said Robert, much more pleasantly than 
he had yet spoken. He could bear with old Mrs. McGee far 
better than he could bear with these new importations, the 
Ryans. 

“Whin ye see a good woman, Mickey Ryan,” Pa’a’d used 
to say, “kape yer eye on her. Niver take ut awf till ye see 
the next good woman cornin’ roimd the cor’rner. ’Tis the one 
way to kape safe.” 

Robert glanced downwards towards his book. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


239 

“An’ good ’twould ‘a’ been fer Mickey Ryan there,” Miss 
McGee proceeded darkly, “ef he had hearkened to Pa’a. He 
gawn the way his Pa’a never done, Mr. Fulton, an’ that’s 
the way of the bad women, God help um.” 

Miss McGee considered a moment. She didn’t want to 
prejudice Robert too desperately against Mickey if she could 
help it. 

“But he’s a’alroight, I guess,” she said, “ef he is sport-y. 
He knows the way to the bad women’s house, but he ain’t the 
only one.” 

This was so incontestable a remark that Robert saw no way 
to answer it. He didn’t want to anyway. He was only 
listening with one ear. Pie wasn’t interested. 

“An’ ef Biddy Ryan don’t know enough to stay home when 
ut rains an’ she don’t know the way to fix herself so her hus- 
band stawps home too, why, I guess she kin take a’all that’s 
cornin’ to her,” Miss McGee said, after a considerable pause. 

Robert continued to make no remark. 

There was another long pause. 

“She has her ly-mousine,” Miss McGee proceeded, “an’ the 
dawg on the front seat, an’ the Chaw-fure at the helm. I guess 
she’s a’alroight.” 

Robert did hope that the Ryans were now done with for 
ever and ever. He felt growing up inside himself the same 
dislike against Mickey and Mrs. Mickey and Pa’a, too, that 
he had felt the other night against Dan and Pat McKennay and 
the Finns and all the rest of them. He sat quite tense — so 
anxious was he to hear the last of Miss McGee’s friends; 
and when she burst out again after about five minutes’ silence 
he felt all his muscles jump. 

“When Pa’a gawn out,” Miss McGee said, gazing intently 
into the sinking fire (she meant out of the world and not 
out into the street as Robert at first understood), “he had 
Ma’a up at the house there fer to bid um good-by. Says he, 
‘Yer the good woman, Mary McGee, an’ ef ye ain’t had ut 
in this loife, be-lieve me it’s cornin’ in the next. ’Tis the 
Ryans,’ he says, ‘will be gittin’ ut hot there,’ he says, ‘so good- 
by to ye now.’ He stritched out his hand — Ma’a’d used to 
say ’twas cold then — an’ he fell back on his pillas. ‘Pray 
fer me, Mary McGee,’ says he. He died that noight.” 

Miss McGee bent down and took up the poker and neatly 
trimmed off the fire. She was speaking now as if Robert 
were not there at all. 


240 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“My, my,” she said, “men’s made all sor’rts o’ quare ways. 
But most of ’em is made the one way, I guess, an’ whin ye 
foind one that’s made t’other, most toimes he ain’t much of a 
man.” 

She put down the poker and reached for her work-bag, and 
she seemed to become conscious of Robert’s existence 
again. 

“One sure thing,” she remarked in her usual voice, “I seen 
many better men than Mickey Ryan with the bowels o’ mer’rcy 
lef’ out. So I guess he’s Pa’a’s bo’oy after all.” 

She began to sew. 

Miss McGee had not enlightened Robert as to her schemes 
for Mickey. Even after she came in to the room and saw 
him reading his book, she had fully intended to tell him every- 
thing — how she meant this old friend of hers to get her out 
of her dressmaking life and land her somewhere else; and 
then, perhaps, when it was all fairly settled — she had intended 
to tell Robert this too — Mickey might be approached on the even 
more important subject of Robert himself. 

She had meant to make a clean breast of it all. But when 
she got into her story — in rather a roundabout way as her 
manner was — she saw that it somehow wouldn’t do. Mickey 
was “a’alroight,” he was “Pa’a’s bo’oy,” he was “sport-y” and 
all the rest of it. But he wasn’t for Robert, any more than 
Mac was. Miss McGee saw this almost as soon as she began 
to speak; and, once having grasped the fact, she said to her- 
self, “I’ll wait till Mickey’s fixed me good an’ then I’ll tell 
um, bless um.” She didn’t feel in the least provoked with 
Robert for his lack of interest. She merely felt that it would 
be a false step to enlighten him at this stage of the proceed- 
ings — that she had had hers, as she phrased it to herself, the 
other night at Mrs. Morphy’s, and she wasn’t taking any more. 
She therefore sat at her side of the fire after she reached for 
her work-bag, not at all unhappy for the time being — thoughts 
of what Mickey would do for her slipping through her head 
as her needle went slipping through her piece of cloth. She 
had infinite faith in Mickey — was he not Pa’a’s bo’oy, and 
had not Pa’a been good to Ma’a? She reviewed in her mind 
what other topics of conversation she might introduce, the 
Mickey one being laid away on the shelf for the moment. 

“Mac’s gawn,” she said, after a long interval of silence. She 
noticed Robert give a slight movement of impatience in his 
chair, but she thought she might indulge herself with one 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


241 

minute of Mac — considering he was gone for good and all. 
“He’s gawn an’, take ut from me, more’s the pity.” 

She sewed for a bit in silence and in an extremely business- 
like manner. It was always a pleasure to watch her needle- 
hand moving along. 

“Sure, I guess he'll make the grade a’alroight,” she said 
after a bit — she was also saying to herself that, after this, she 
would stop. “That young fella is one smart-y, take ut from 
me.” She now began to get so fascinated in her subject that 
Robert’s boredom ceased to be a motive power for her at all. 
“Sure,” she said, “Mac’s great. An’ he’ll fix up matrimonially 
too where he’s goin’, or me name’s not McGee. Why, that 
young fella there,” she said, warming to her subject and cross- 
ing her legs and gazing once more intently into the fire, 
“has ‘wed’ wrote roight all over um.” She settled herself 
now for a thorough good “ta’alk.” “You take my wor’rd,” she 
said — and she sighed: she was thinking of Rose 

But Robert had had enough. 

“Miss McGee,” he said, rising and reaching for his book 
and giving it a tap as he put it under his arm, “do you 
know what this book says? It says, ‘I can generally bear the 
separation, but I don’t like the leave-taking.’ ” Then, after 
just a second’s pause to allow the quotation to sink in, “You’ll 
find,” Robert said, “that’s your condition as to Mac. You’ll 
get over his departure.” 

He knew this wasn’t nice of him. He knew he hadn’t 
behaved well this evening — but he couldn’t help the dig. He 
did so dislike Mac. He went towards the door with the 
offending book under his arm. “Good night,” he said. 

Miss McGee sat by the fire, pondering. She didn’t even 
seem to notice that Robert was going away. “My wor’rd,” she 
said, in a meditative voice, “but tha’at’s good” 

This remark of Butler’s had struck her far more than the 
whole Canada Book. She didn’t see the slightest joke in it. 
She didn’t consider it in the least degree funny — but she liked 
it. She accepted it as solid fact. 

“It’s true, be God,” she said, slowly raising her meditative 
eyes to Robert’s. “ ’Tis the Goods a’alroight. I jes’ hated 
to say ‘so long’ to Mac — but now he’s gawn I don’t seem to 
care one par’rticle.” 

She kept her meditative eyes fixed on Robert’s face. Mac 
floated away into what used to be called the ether. 

“I guess ye’re glad we got yer name fixed on them Free Libery 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


242 

lists there,” she said. (Through Miss McGee’s intervention 
and Mr. Barclay’s signature, Robert had been promoted to 
Membership at the Free Library of Regalia, and the Note- 
Books were the first-fruits of his Membership.) “Ye kin git 
yer own books now.” She went on rather wistfully, “an’ 
please yerself, eh. An’ I guess ye won’t be wroitin’ so much 
on yer own now, eh,” she continued, that odd penetrative 
power of seeing into others coming once more to the fore now 
that her own concerns no longer occupied her exclusively. 
“ ’Tis easier enjoyin’ what t’other folks wroites, eh, than be 
wroitin’ on yer own?” 

Robert looked down on her with a smile. She always 
managed to catch him in the end. 

“You’re right,” he said, “but,” his smile grew more pro- 
nounced, “how did you know?” 

“Must ye go?” Miss McGee answered — she was down on the 
ground once more with Robert, and the fact that was prin- 
cipally clear to her was that she didn’t want him to go away. 

“I must,” said Robert. “Good night.” And as he ran up- 
stairs, he said to himself, “Those awful friends of hers! 
Ghastly creatures ...” 

Miss McGee, left alone, reviewed the evening. It had not 
been a conspicuous success, yet neither had it been a complete 
failure. The subject she had wished to reach after Mickey had 
been blown away had certainly been “Uncle’s coat.” The bleak 
March wind that had blown through her on her way to the 
station had renewed the wish in her that Robert should wear 
that cherished article and be warm in it. And yet she had 
never got — never could somehow get — the length of mention- 
ing it. 

“Seems too bad,” she said to herself, left sitting by her 
fire alone, “seems loike there was bad luck in ut. An’ yet 
’twould fit um loike a mericle . . . onest ’twas took in 
under the ar’rums there.” 

She sat pondering and gazing into the fire with earnest eyes. 

“Sure ef I was to put the brand-new velvut collar on ut 
’tis King George umself’d look the bawss in ut,” she thought. 

She got stiffly down on her knees to rake out the fire, and 
knelt with the poker in her hand, gazing a moment longer into 
the glowing redness. 

“ ’Twas eight year come June me uncle Mike Cassidy died 
on me,” she said meditatively to herself. She paused. “Sure!” 
she went on in a pensive way of thought, “but when a coat’s 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


243 

cut swa’all it is cut swa’all, I guess;” and the rest of her medita- 
tions after that were one huge interrogation mark — till the 
fact of her never being able to propound the coat-question to 
Robert at all came over her once more, and once more she 
sighed deeply. “Oh my,” she thought, “where’s the use of a 
wor’rld I want to know where nothin’ don’t never come awf” 
She raked out the glowing cinders on to the hearth and bat- 
tered them black with the fire-shovel with an almost unneces- 
sary violence. 

“Mickey’s goin’ to be my little tin god on wheels this 
toime, anyway,” she was saying to herself cheerfully five min- 
utes later as she tied up her head in the woollen shawl that 
wrapped the tea-pot round when she went to morning church. 
Her spirits flew up at the thought. “Mickey’s my little beau 
that brings the goods home,” she said, setting her window care- 
fully a little bit ajar so that no draught might fall on her 
directly in the night. 

She clambered into bed. 

“It’s stiff I’m gettin’,” she remarked, clutching the bed-post, 
“ ’tis toime to be goin’ to Mickey. Kitty McGee, ye’re an 
old woman. . . 

She got down into the bed and turned, like a cat settling 
itself for a nap. She hunched the clothes contentedly over her 
shoulders — and she went to sleep. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

A S soon as Miss McGee had definitely taken this resolution 
to go to Mickey Ryan the world changed its color. In- 
stead of being a drabbish-gray, mole-colored sort of 
world it suddenly became shot through with prismatic lights. 
As Katie McGee looked about her, going to her work in the 
early morning or coming back in the late afternoon, she didn’t 
see the soft dusk she was walking through, she saw rosy 
tints and hints of the most heavenly blue, she saw her future — 
she calculated it at twenty years more perhaps — spreading out 
before her in a charming delicate luminous tint: she saw her 
future, in fact, in color; not inky-black as we see our futures 
when things are going wrong with us. 

Presently she ’phoned Mickey. And it was when a strange 
voice answered from the other end asking her name and 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


244 

whether she could state her business that it began to dawn 
upon Miss McGee that Mickey had indeed sailed into the 
business empyrean. He had reached that height when he was 
protected by hello girls sitting at the switch in the entrance- 
hall, and by stenographers of his own; it had become a matter 
of some difficulty even to get speech with him. It was during 
the conversation with the telephone girl — short, sharp, and to 
the point — that Miss McGee felt her first qualm of uncer- 
tainty as to her mission to Mickey. However, she persevered. 
And, when she had insisted on sending her name in to Mickey 
and persisted in refusing to state any business at all, a mes- 
sage was at length brought back from the Bawss himself that 
he would see her the next day at noon. The young lady at 
the other end delivered the message as if she were shooting 
something out of a fire-arm of modern manufacture, and when 
she had finished shooting she cut the telephonic communica- 
tion off. 

This appointment of Mickey’s implied, according to Miss 
McGee’s first calculation, a day off. And then it occurred to 
her that, as it was the Lady (so she continued always to call 
Miss Eileen Martyn in her mind) for whom she happened 
to be working, and as the Lady was unlike any other lady 
on the face of Miss McGee’s earth, she would explain the 
matter to her and see whether an hour off might be granted — 
and considered, of course, in the day’s pay: Miss McGee was 
nothing if not honest, and, as she said, always asked nothin’ 
from no one for nothin’. The Lady proved, not only a will- 
ing, but an eager ally. “But of course,” she said with great 
emphasis, “of course you must go. Take as long as you like. 
What does it matter how long you’re away? I have to go out 
myself,” she continued after a second, “but I’ll leave the key 
under the door-mat and you can take it out and let yourself 
in whenever you want to.” 

It was interesting to see that so intelligent a creature as 
the Lady still lent herself to the fiction of^ the unfindableness 
of a door-key under a door-mat. 

“Be sure you tell me all about it, now,” said the Lady, the 
last thing before Miss McGee set off. “And make yourself 
nice to him, mind. Tell him I’ll give you a reference, and try 
and get him to promise something. Be sure ...” 

Her voice sounded really interested. 

As Miss McGee made her way to Mickey’s Office she found 
herself thinking about the Lady. She found her mind dwell- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


HS 

ing indeed on the Lady rather than on the all-important talk 
she was about to have with Mickey. What was the Lady? 
How did she come to be where she was, elegant / educated, with 
no servant, working, evidently, as Miss McGee could see, 
rather harder than her strength could overtake? Miss McGee, 
walking rapidly along in the down-town direction, reflected 
that she knew absolutely nothing about this customer of hers. 
Much as she had told the Lady — and she had, first and last, 
told her a lot! — the Lady had told her nothing in return. She 
was receptive exceedingly, but communicative not at all. Miss 
McGee did not even know for certain whether the Lady was 
married or not. She seemed to be unmarried at the moment, 
but there were things she had said that seemed impossible to 
emanate from anything but a very-much married woman. And 
yet she seemed “good.” She was beyond Miss McGee’s ken. 
She was a mystery. 

When Miss McGee got down-town the question of the Lady 
faded from her mind before the more instant question of how 
she was to “manage” Mickey. Miss McGee had a great 

idea (in common with most of her sex) of “managing” Man. 

She said to herself as she came near Mickey’s Office, “Ef I 
was young I could twist um round me finger, you bet. But 

I’m old, God help me, I’m old, an’ it’s goin’ to be har’rd to 

git around um p’raps.” And involuntarily, with the woman’s 
instinctive turn of the head, she viewed herself in the window 
she was passing. Old — old — old. Work-worn — work-worn — 
work-worn. Her heart sank. “How am I to ask Mickey to 
help me quit an’ me lookin’ like that?” she said to herself. 
And, as she passed through the big outside revolving door of the 
great building where Mickey’s Office was and made her way 
to the elevator, she drew herself up and together in a pitiful 
desire to impress herself even on the elevator man. “Ryan, 
Sullivan and McCurdy,” she said — and went swinging upward. 

Nothing could possibly have been nicer than Mickey. He 
had developed from the red-headed glory of a bo’oy into a big 
heavy expensive man. You could see, to look at him, that 
he ate big dinners that cost a lot of money, and that even 
his lunches were not things to sneeze at. His watch-chain, 
that hung across his ample stomach, was the best quality. His 
clothes were a comfort to his tailor. His socks and shirts and 
ties were everything they shouldn’t be perhaps, but for all 
that they hadn’t come in with the milk, as Miss McGee said 
to herself. They had cost money. Mickey, and Mickey’s 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


246 

Office, and doubtless Mickey’s home, and the flat where he kept 
his other home, were all things that were expensive and, from 
the point of view of dollars and cents, of the first grade only. 
He was one of the successful ones of the earth — good-natured on 
occasion, self-indulgent always, quick to see profit, stupid in- 
tellectually, hard as nails, and yet responsive to any adroit 
touch on his weaknesses of the flesh; Mickey Ryan was bom 
to be a modem money-maker, and he was a money-maker, and 
it was hard to fancy even his disembodied spirit in any other 
manifestation than as a money-maker still. His presence 
breathed money. As he sat with his fat legs crossed into the 
aperture of his hideous costly desk, with the dictaphone to 
one side of him, and human machines just on the other side 
of the wall hired at so much apiece to be ready to run at 
the least touch on his bell, you felt that he and money were 
partners: and that, running in harness as they did, they were 
a power — the power of the present world. It seemed, looking 
at Mickey, as if love itself could not wage war against this 
supreme power that Mickey and his dollars embodied. As if 
the best thing love could do would be to draw itself apart 
and assume a waiting posture. “Some time my turn will come. 
But Mickey now . . . ” 

The moment Miss McGee was shown into Mickey’s private 
sanctum, her errand seemed to her a sort of lost dog wandering 
where it had no business to be. If she had followed her im- 
pulse she would have turned and gone back into the snowy 
street and followed her dressmaking trade forevermore. How- 
ever, she couldn’t very well turn and go out of Ryan, Sullivan 
and McCurdy’s office without explaining her presence there. 
By the very momentum of her own efforts, she was obliged to 
shake hands with Mickey, to assume a composure she was far 
from feeling, and to sit down in the chair he indicated — the 
client’s chair on the other side of the table from his own. 

“Well, Kitty McGee,” said Mickey kindly, “ ’tis the big 
day since you and me was the youngsters together, eh? How’s 
the world with you, me dear?” 

His voice was friendliness itself, and, except that it was 
slightly hoarser, it was the voice of the old Mickey Ryan that 
had run riot in Ma’a’s yard and got Da’a’s stick at night. It 
reassured Miss McGee. 

“I’m slick,” she said. “How’s yerself, Mickey, eh?” 

Mickey sighed, and a look of gloom — odd on his broad 
rubicund good-nature — over-spread his face. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


247 

“None too good, Kitty,” he said. “Things goes back on me, 
God damn ’em, most days.” 

And then Miss McGee thought she saw the way to “manage” 
him. 

It was only after she had asked him every possible question 
that sympathy could suggest, only after she had taken his 
side against Biddy, urged him on to further revolt against 
her and her mother, steadied him in his determination to take 
his kids away from his wife and send them to any boarding- 
school he had a fancy for: it was after she had led him into 
reminiscences of the old life and his Da’a and her Ma’a, 
and only after that that Miss McGee began to venture to set 
forth her own proposition. She told Mickey how she had 
fared in the world. She made it clear to him how hard she 
had worked and how little she had got. She told him in un- 
mistakeable Irish how she felt towards her profession. “Mickey,” 
she said, “for the love of God, git some sawft snap quick; 
ye know the way to slip me in. I’d fix things. I’d bring 
home the goods, you bet, every toime. Sure as I’m aloive, I 
can’t go the way I’m goin’. I’m sick an’ toired of the dress- 
makin’ ” — and through her mind dashed the possibility of some 
soft snap in his very office itself, perhaps — “I’m quick, Mick 
Ryan,” she said, “I’d wor’rk. Don’t ye know the way I was 
always quick, Mickey dear,” she said, changing her tone for 
the coaxing one. “Ef I was slipped in a trust-job be a 
friend, I’d keep ut, be sure. Ef — ef there was any Bawss’d 
trust me- ” 

Her voice slipped away into nothingness. 

Mickey looked at her. He hesitated. 

“Kitty,” he said, “ye were best to stawp where ye are.” 
And then, noting the desperate fall in her face, he went on, as 
if he had always meant so to go on, “but sure, me dear, I’ll 
look around. I’ll see what there is . . .” And he wandered 
off into vague talk and vaguer promises of Street Car Com- 
panies and Telephone jobs and men he knew that he 
would speak to. It sounded grand and it signified nothing 
at all. But Miss McGee’s knowledge of the world didn’t lie 
that way — and she thought he meant it. 

When she left the office she found not the slightest difficulty 
in impressing herself on the elevator-man or anyone else. She 
trusted Mickey. She felt that certainty of emerging out of 
her present life and into some other much more prosperous 
one that arose naturally out of her trust. Mickey would do the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


248 

straight thing. Mickey would fix loife. With his hopeful 
words going round and round in her head Katie McGee saw 
not the slightest difficulty in her being “slipped into” some 
comfortable job, in earning a fair living wage there, in being 
able to live decently, in being able to help Robert. “Onest 
Mickey’s through with me,” Miss McGee said to herself, “I’ll 
set um on to Mr. Fulton. He'll fix um.” And she saw Robert 
in some secure little job with little to do (so that he could 
have lots of time for writing) and much to get, and all round 
about herself and Robert she saw a beneficent universe quite 
different from the world they had hitherto inhabited. She 
walked uptown again with a swift springy step. She felt 
warmed and comforted. It never occurred to her (quick and 
worldly-wise as she was, too, in some things) that Mickey’s 
easiest way had been to promise what he had not the faintest 
intention of ever attempting to perform. She took the Lady’s 
key from its inscrutable hiding-place under the doormat, fitted 
it into the door, opened the door, and came into the pleasant 
safe cozy flat that was so redolent somehow of the Lady’s 
presence even when she was not there. “He’d be happy, bless 
um, in an apartment fitted out the way this one is,” Miss Mc- 
Gee thought, glancing about her. “It’d fit um the way the pod 
fits the pea ... it looks loike um now” And when she had 
taken off her things and hung them up in the Lady’s cupboard 
and sat down at the table again, her work simply ran through 
her hands, and everything succeeded with her, she was so happy. 
She sewed, and turned and twisted the stuff in her quick nimble 
fingers, and when the Lady got back a little later with the 
eager word on her lips, “Well, Miss McGee, what did he say?” 
she found her gown in an extraordinary state of finish. Miss 
McGee had positively romped through the difficulties. “Guess 
you’re goin’ to look loike the Queen of England (she meant 
Victoria) in this,” she cried gayly, holding up the gown: and 
then, coming on to the real thing, “Me friend says he kin fix 
me a’alroight. Sure, Ryan, Sullivan and McCurdy’s It. Ef 
I ’d’ve knew before I’d went to-day what a swa’all place they 
got there an’ the way Mickey Ryan’s got umself all fixed up, 
I guess I’d never have went. But it’s a’alroight,” Miss McGee 
said. “It’s a’aZroight, I guess.” Her voice gave a queer little 
crack. “Mickey Ryan spoke to-day the way he moight ’a’ been 
me brother. He says he knows guys that’s wantin' ladies the 
loike of me, and he says he’ll speak to the ’phone folks. . . .” 
Once more her voice gave a queer little crack — “so I guess 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


249 

I kin quit,” she said. “I guess I kin say so long to the 
dressmakin’ job. An’ I’m glad. I’m glad. I’ve bore up . . . 
but I been crazy to quit ever sinst Ma’a died on me an’ I gawn 
to New York ...” 

Miss McGee was silent a minute. 

“I guess I’ll fix your clothes up slick,” she said, “before 
I quit. You been good to me.” 

She paused. 

“Take ut from me,” she said, “dressmakin’ ain’t fer a loife- 
toime. There ain’t nothin’ to ut. Ye git sick an’ toired ’ 

She paused again. 

“But what’s the use o’ ta’alkin’,” she said, “when I’m pretty 
near out of ut now.” 

“I’m glad, Miss McGee,” the Lady said: and it was after a 
second that she added, “if ...” She stopped there. “Well, 
I’m glad,” she said, after another second, “that you think 
you’ve got what you want.” 

She went out of the room to take off her coat and hat. And 
it was only after she had gone away that it came over Miss 
McGee that her voice had been very grave. She wondered 
why. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

I T was on his birthday that Robert read the next section of 
his book to Miss McGee. His birthday happened to be on 
the date of the reputed birthday of Shakespeare, and this 
little fact gave Robert each year an absurd little throb of sat- 
isfaction. Possibly it was ridiculous that Robert Fulton liked 
his birthday at all. It has become the fashion to be superior 
over birthdays and anniversaries generally, and to say, “What is 
the New Year? Every day is a New Year”: and in the same 
way, “What does it matter what day you were born? Any day 
is good enough to bring forth anyone.” 

Robert Fulton did not share this excessively democratic feel- 
ing to dates. He did like his birthday. He would have thor- 
oughly enjoyed it if someone had made a great big pleasant 
fuss, and shown affection by welcoming the day that had 
brought him into existence. No one made any fuss at all. No 
one in fact knew anything about it. And so, in a sort of 
self-defense, Robert had fallen into the way of doing some 
small thing on his own account to mark the event ... of his 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


250 

having reached such-and-such an age. He said to himself 
apologetically that it was Shakespeare’s birthday he was cele- 
brating, and then, as an afterthought, he glided himself under 
Shakespeare’s wing and felt glad that Nature had arranged 
that they should slip into the world on the same day — never 
mind how many centuries apart. If this was a child-like, or 
even perhaps, a childish trait in Robert Fulton’s character, 
it was nevertheless there, mixing inextricably with the rest of it. 

For some days before Shakespeare’s birthday, therefore, Rob- 
ert was busy. He ate his supper in Miss McGee’s apartment, 
and then he hurried to his own room and reveled in the pleasant 
unaccustomed warmth of it — looked into the glow of his fire and 
felt happy. He felt a sort of dare-devil luxurious pleasure in 
the sight. When he sat down to write with his table jammed 
into the warmest comer and his chair placed so that he could 
feel on his body the full force of the flame and the red after- 
coming glow, he felt as if for the moment he had managed to 
shut the world outside and that he was in some safe secure 
inside spot — where he could live. A fire for Robert was an 
event. From this trifle he could extract a meal for his senses. 
The one drop of honey in extreme poverty is this ability it gives 
to extract pleasures from the merest trifles. As Robert Fulton 
watched the reflection of the dancing flames of his fire on the 
wall it seemed to him — very temporarily and transitorily of 
course — that his Canada Book was perhaps worth something; 
he felt sure for that moment, anyway, that the creation of it was 
bounded both behind and before with happiness. 

It just happened that this section of his booklet gave Robert 
special pleasure to write. He felt — rightly or wrongly — that in 
it he was drawing nearer to the worker than he had ever been 
able to draw before. He had passed that first worst step of recog- 
nizing that he was on the wrong road. He had taken time to 
think; and sometimes as he busied himself about this Sec- 
tion V, he felt as if the Canada Book might — perhaps — blossom 
into something after all. Quite a little blossom, of course — a 
daisy among flowers: but yet that it might be worth that much 
from the very fact that its author was sincere. Robert Fulton 
had reached a midway state. His desire was to be heart and 
soul with the worker and yet he was uneasily conscious of 
being driven away from him both by the fastidiousness of his 
senses and by the convolutions of his brain. Also — possibly his 
convolutions were too convoluted — Robert had a capacity of 
seeing things both ways at once . . . like a fly: and what 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


251 

usually goes with this power was thrust upon him too: the in- 
capacity to accept passionately any given side. Without defi- 
nitely knowing it indeed — he wasn’t introspective — Robert was 
perhaps the least bit cold. He never could bubble over at any 
rate, as Miss McGee did when things enchanted her. On the 
other hand, he could do what she never could — he could see 
what was good even in those things that were most antagonistic 
to him . . . provided the things, such as Dan at Mrs. Morphy’s 
supper-par’rty,' were physically absent so that his senses did 
not get in the way. He saw, for example, exactly what the 
immigrant to Canada wanted: and he sympathized (intellectu- 
ally) with that want. At the same time he saw with equal 
clearness what was lacking in that desire — and all that was 
right and praiseworthy in what the immigrant didn't want. 
It was no wonder that he and Canada didn’t agree. The 
very fact that he liked his birthday to be on the same d^ite 
as Shakespeare’s is enough to show that Canada and he never 
could have agreed. He did like this, however, very much: 
and his intention to finish the section he was working at and 
take it down to Miss McGee’s on April 23rd and read it aloud 
on that night (as a tiny offering on Shakespeare’s shrine) 
nerved him to special efforts and sent him to bed each night with 
the pleasant glow of something actually done. 

The last month had been a pleasanter one than usual, and 
that fact alone made it easier to work. Miss McGee had been 
in a mysterious state of good spirits (mysterious because she had 
not yet divulged to Robert her hopes of Mickey Ryan) and 
he had basked, as it were, in the rays of her hopefulness. The 
month had passed for Miss McGee, it is true, without anything 
definite happening. One day, a couple of weeks or so after her 
trip downtown, she had ventured to ring Mickey’s office up 
and had, after some preliminary skirmishing with the young 
lady on the ’phone, “got him”; and then he had merely reiter- 
ated what he had said before. “Nothin’ doin’, Kitty, yet. 
You wait. Keep cool. I'll fix ye.” Miss McGee had hung up 
the receiver with the same feeling of joyous anticipation that 
she had had when she left Mickey’s office. He was going to 
place her. He was choosing amongst various delightful jobs 
the most delightful for her. Her dressmaking days were near 
an end. Soon she need no longer be preoccupying herself with 
customers’ dresses. She would be “fixed” in some new work, 
necessarily better than any she had ever had before, she 
would be mixing with more interesting “folks,” she would 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


252 

be getting on better, making more money. It was odd that 
a woman, knocked-about as Miss McGee had been, should have 
had such visions. One would have thought that any nose 

that had been kept at the grindstone all its life would have 

had more sensible ideas of the world. But then Miss McGee 
had seen so little of the world. She had seen Regalia and a 

sort of thin surface film (what a visitor does see of a city) 

of New York: and she had heard about Ireland. That was 
all. Of the small space she knew she had acute concep- 
tions: of the enormous space that lay all around that small 
space she knew — the great big outside real world — she knew 
nothing at all. 

On the night of the 23rd Robert came back from the Arundel 
Market with a quick step. He longed to get home and begin 
reading the Canada Book. He ran upstairs, washed his hands, 
brushed his hair, took hold of his manuscript and his cap, and 
ran down-stairs again to Miss McGee’s room. When he got 
there, to his unbounded astonishment (for such a thing had 
never happened before) he found Miss McGee on the threshold 
of her apartment with her arm round the neck of a big fair 
outspreading sort of woman who made Miss McGee look be- 
side her florescence like a little dark-skinned white-haired 
gnome. 

“Well, good noight to ye, Mary dear,” Miss McGee was 
saying. “Come again, eh. An’ good noight, Ag,” she went on, 
releasing the big woman and turning to a younger fatter 
thing that hovered in the background. “Goo’-by, dear, an’ 
fetch on yer fy-ance to see me, eh.” And without being aware 
of Robert (he had shrunk back into the shadow of the staircase 
wall) she went over to the banister and hung over it as her 
visitors descended, calling after them as they picked their way 
downstairs, “Good noight to ye. Come again, eh.” It was not 
till she was going back into her own room that she saw Robert 
was there at all. 

“Me dear!” she said then in a warm happy tone — it was as if 
her affection for the whole world was just brimming over — 
“come on in. That was me sister, Mary Garry. She come on 
here an’ made ut up with me. . . .” 

Robert glanced at Miss McGee — it was something in her 
voice that made his glance — and he saw that her eyes were full 
of tears. 

“We had the same Ma’a,” she said, after a minute, “Mary 
an’ me. Ye can’t go back on yer own, eh.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


253 


She stopped short and a tear ran down her cheek. 

“I’m the darn-fool,” she said, “sure. I don’t want to make 
ut up with Mary. But she come an’ we got ta’alkin’. An’ 
sisters scrappin’ is silly. . . 

She stopped again and another tear rolled down her cheek. 

“Oh, go on,” she said, “there ain’t nothin’ to cry about.” 

And she hesitated. 

“What’s pa’ast is pa’ast,” she said, after a bit, “an’ I’ll git 
yer supper.” 

And, as she went bustling about, she said, “Sure ’tis all 
behoind I am, but ye won’t be moindin’, Mr. Fulton, dear. 
’Twas me sister cornin’. . . .” 

She was unable to get beyond the reconciliation. She 
prattled about it all the time she fetched the dishes and set 
the table and boiled the water and made the toast. Robert sat 
with his eyes on the fire, thinking. It was Shakespeare’s 
birthday — but he felt londly. Shakespeare, whatever else he 
was, wasn’t a family tree. Robert felt acutely on this anniver- 
sary of his birth-night that he would like a sister — or a cousin — 
or even an aunt ... if she were nice. He wanted something 
of his own: and he hadn’t anything. Decidedly there is a 
great deal of sense in not keeping anniversaries at all. 


CHAPTER XXXV 

Y OU remember where we were?” Robert said when the 
things were all cleared away, and the inner man was 
(so far) comforted, and the hearth was tidied up. “It’s 
a long time since we read anything together.” 

Miss McGee looked up brightly. She wasn’t thinking of 
Robert’s manuscript at all. Scenes of old times were floating 
before her eyes : and together with these old scenes were mingled 
the reconciliation with her sister and possible new scenes to be 
set by Mickey the Great. Miss McGee was feeling that the 
Kitty McGee of long ago might yet resurrect into a Miss 
McGee who was worthy of consideration and respect: if she 
had not felt like this, Mrs. Garry might have come to visit 
her in vain. “Never moind,” Katie McGee had said to her- 
self when the poverty of her surroundings had struck her 
full in the face as she was talking to her prosperous sister. 
“Don’t worry. I’ll be out of this. I’ll be in me own yet.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


254 

It was this power of imagination of hers that had enabled 
her to face the situation with dignity and keep pace with Mary 
Garry’s overtures. “Sure I’ll be even with ’em yet,” she had 
kept saying to herself all through the interview. “Mickey’s 
fixin’ ut. I’ll show ’em.” 

These ideas were still floating about in Miss McGee’s con- 
sciousness: it was these ideas Indeed that enabled her to 
look at Robert with such bright intelligent eyes. 

“Sure,” she said, “I remimber.” (She remembered nothing.) 
“I’m there a’alroight, you bet. Foire ahead, Mr. Fulton, dear. 
I’m with ye.” 

“We were talking about the clerks and stenographers and 
how they became Canada — how they are Canada after a time,” 
Robert said, rather as if he were beginning a Lecture. And 
then he stopped himself and glanced at his friend with a 
smile. 

“You’re Canada, aren’t you,” he said, “and your sister that 
made friends with you. And her husband . . . and those other 
friends of yours, Ryan, if that’s their name. And Mrs. Morphy 
too — and Dan, and all the rest of them. They’re all Canada, 
aren’t they?” He paused just imperceptibly. “And your 
mother, I suppose,” he added, as a sort of afterthought. 

Just for the second, oddly enough, he was traversed by a 
pang of jealousy for these people who could merge into the 
vast becoming-ness of Canada, grow into her, become rib of 
her ribs and loin of her loins. Canada even, in that case, might 
be something of your own. “I’m not Canada,” he said, “am 
I, Miss McGee? I won’t ever be . . .” 

He stopped short and looked away from his manuscript and 
down into the fire. 

“Ye’re yerself,” Miss McGee said in a matter-of-fact tone. 
“God made ye the way ye are.” And then, after just a mo- 
mentary halt, she went on, “Ma’a’d used to say she was hap- 
pier in Ireland.” 

“Did she?” Robert said. He felt not so lonely. 

Miss McGee pursed up her mouth and nodded several times. 

“Sure,” she said, “she’d used to say, ‘Katie, ef I had to do ut 
over again, ’tis in Ireland I’d stay.’ An’ yet,” Miss McGee 
said, right on the top of this remark of Ma’a’s, “will ye 
look at Mary there I” 

The vision of the big fair prosperous well-dressed woman 
on the stairway rose before the eyes of Robert. 

“H’m!” he said. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


2 SS 


One of their pauses fell between them. 

“Ain’t ye goin’ to read yer piece,” Miss McGee said, break- 
ing it after a minute or so, “I’m a’all fixed up to listen.” 

And she laid her chin in her hands in the old way and sat 
gazing steadfastly at him with her large eyes. 

Robert had thick short hair — fair hair, the kind that would 
have been soft and dense and cloudy in texture if it had been 
a woman’s and long. His eyes were clear light eyes; and 
when they looked full at you, you saw in them a queer in- 
genuousness. They were eyes that knew a good deal and 
suspected that there was a great deal more to know, and yet 
they were eyes to which a great deal of life would always re- 
main sealed. The mouth was a pleasant one. Had the world 
treated it well it would have smiled easily; and even as things 
were it did smile fairly often — a shy, slightly deprecating, very 
friendly smile, the “good smile,” of which Mrs. Morphy had 
spoken at the unlucky supper: there was something akin be- 
tween the look in the eyes and this smile that drew you to 
Robert Fulton. You couldn’t be in his company a minute 
without feeling that you were in the presence of a genuine hu- 
man being. He was not a pretense thing, masquerading as a 
man; he was, so far as he went, the real thing: and if he 
didn’t go all the way, he went, at least, the length of his 
tether. 

As Miss McGee sat opposite him with her chin in her 
hands and gazed at him, she was conscious of a deep pleasure 
in his looks. He wasn’t good-looking, in the ordinary sense; 
but he had what Miss McGee admired. He had “style” — dis- 
tinction, in a small way. She looked at him, and felt very 
proud that she knew him. She felt very proud that she was 
thus admitted, as it were, to the inside of his mind. She did 
not exactly listen, perhaps, but she sat hearing what he had 
to say. What he had so striven over in his little room up- 
stairs came home, on this night of Shakespeare’s birthday, 
in an odd way to Miss McGee. She seemed to feel what she had 
felt the first shadow of on the last occasion of his reading — 
his sympathy with whatjie wrote of: and this time, curiously, 
not in words but more through the medium of what he did 
not say, he conveyed to her something else: that her experience 
of the world was of value — that an “elegant education,” how- 
ever elegant it may be, does not go all the way. “God save us,” 
she thought, leaning forward and regarding him very affection- 
ately, “we two makes the whole. He’s one ha’alf, bless um, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


256 

with all he knows, an’ I’m t’other ha’alf with all I don't 
know.” She felt, sitting hearing what he had to say, that 
she could supply just what he lacked; that the knowledge — 
the squalid sordid knowledge of life that she had attained 
with so much sorrow and woe — was what was wanted to 
set the Canada Book on its legs. “Sure ’tis red blood I’d 
pour into ut,” she thought, leaning forward, gazing at him. 
“Sure ’tis loife I could give ...” And then, smiling at 
the thought that she could give anything at all, she leaned 
nearer to him and caressed him with her eyes. “The dear 
choild,” she thought, “will he wroite the book!” And Robert’s 
efforts seemed suddenly to her like the playing of a child with 
a ball. Delightful, of no importance, and yet in another sense 
all-important and the one thing life has to give. 

The old envious thought that she too could have written had 
she had Robert’s advantages seemed a foolish thought now. 
She just felt happy sitting there beside him, motherly, kindly- 
disposed to all the world, fond of Robert — so fond of him that it 
seemed as if all the world was centered in him, and as if, in be- 
ing fond of him, she loved all the world. There was, this 
time, no pang of jealousy to break up this feeling of joy and 
delight. “Sure,” she said to herself, “he’s moine — in a sinse. 
He’s moine — jes’ now. I’ll not worry.” 

Robert read steadily, and without looking up. His clear 
eyes were down on his paper, traveling from line to line. 
The light of the lamp gleamed on his fair hair, and made bright 
lights in it. It was all very quiet, just the falling of an 
occasional ash through the grate, and now and again, a hurried 
blast of wind outside the window. The drawbacks of Miss 
McGee’s room were hidden by the imperfect light. It all 
looked cozy, domestic, there was a flavor of home all around. 
And through this flavor came Robert’s quiet even voice, read- 
ing — reading . . . making views clear — speaking to the world 
outside . . . through Katie McGee. . . . 

‘Except on the very rare cases where a specialized artist 
of quite unusual ability and strength of character is in ques- 
tion, it must be granted that the Newer Worlds do mostly 
crush out the artist in the man. It is not probable that the 
artist will succeed in them in the ordinary sense of the word. 
He will have to take his pleasure in feeling that he has at- 
tained the power of looking things straight in the face and so 
has got into truer relation with essentials — has become, to 
some degree at least, the greatest artist of all, the artist in life. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


257 

Now as there is no chasm between the specialized artist and 
the humblest craftsman, the same thing applies to the manual 
worker who emigrates. The first, naive kind of artist he will 
rapidly cease to be: any remnants of spontaneity and child-like 
intent pleasure in his work will go in Canada. But there is no 
reason why the same processes of reality should not go on in 
his case as in that of his specialized brother. The little bit 
of a virtuoso that he was in his own special department at 
home he will cease to be: but other and more important things 
he will learn — if he has sense enough. . . .’ 

The wind came dashing from O’Neil Street and went scurry- 
ing past the Drayton Place windows. It was not the fierce 
winter wind that had so often pierced Robert through and 
through; it was not even the biting wind through which Miss 
McGee had walked on the night of Mac’s departure: this 
was a spring wind — the precursor of new springing life. It 
came tearing round the corner as a boy plays — hasty — merry — 
preoccupied in its own game. . . . 

‘For the really vital and significant thing in the whole 
situation is that, all the while this elimination of the artist 
from the workmen is taking place, there is something else 
going on in him which is very difficult to grasp and almost 
impossible to put into words. When he gets over to Canada 
he does cast away a great many of his preconceived ideas; he 
loses his bearings; he becomes casual and inefficient and in 
many ways less pleasant than he was, but he becomes a more 
definite personality. He ceases to be one of a class and be- 
comes instead more of a distinctive human being. He sets foot 
on that long road which passes through egoism and acquisitive- 
ness and leads slowly to knowledge and mastery — what wonder 
if he travels eagerly?’ 

Robert’s voice, as he read on this night of April 23rd, was 
not so absolutely even and equable as usual. Part of Miss 
McGee’s inability to understand had on preceding nights arisen 
from this perfect evenness of voice of his. Had he accented 
here, glanced up to translate a word there, she would have under- 
stood long before that his sympathy was where she thought 
it ought to be. It was as much the manner of his way of de- 
livering the exterior as it was the technical matter of the 
interior that had kept him and her apart. This evening, moved 
as he was sometimes by what he had written — moved because of 
the sincerity with which he felt the words he himself had put 
down — his voice took on light and color, it became trans- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


258 

parent at times so that you seemed to see through it, at other 
times it became human and kind. Miss McGee sat gazing 
fondly at him, and she wished this evening might never finish — 
that it might go on for ever and ever and ever — world with- 
out end. . . . 

‘A curious transformation sets in. What is happening is 
that the worker is defiantly proving his own personality not only 
to the world but to himself. He is getting born again — out of 
a class and as an individual. At that stage of the human 
being’s history (and it happens sooner or later to everyone) what 
we call “art” is bound to suffer. If it persists at all — if the 
human being is so essentially of the artistic type that he 
cannot shake it off — it persists unhappily; but it is mainly in 
the intellectual type of artist that this is dbservable. In the 
case of the craftsman, whose interest in his work is trans- 
ferred to interest in himself, the love of the work will die. 
There is no room for both: a man cannot serve two masters. 
In the birth of self-consciousness, art must go for a time. . . / 

Robert knew that he was carrying Miss McGee along with 
him. He realized, and more distinctly than if she had tried 
to give voice to it, the confused understanding of his paper 
that was going on in her mind. He knew that she was 
liking what he had to read to her. He was even conscious 
that he was saying something to her that she had long been 
wanting to hear. As he turned over to the last page of his 
manuscript, he glanced up at her and met full with his own 
light clear candid eyes her dark shining caressing glance. He 
smiled, and when he turned back to his page, he carried back 
that look with him — eager yet pensive too, happy, immensely 
anxious to understand. 

‘The worker is not likely to be happy in Canada, but then 
would he be happy anywhere, once he has entered the stage 
of self-consciousness? Can you be acutely self-conscious and 
happy at one and the same time — if your self-consciousness is 
being used by you only in order to further your own in- 
terests and assert your rights? But if he is no happier, he will 
at any rate be more satisfied. He gains a sense of freedom in 
the New World, and in the escape from tradition and the 
routine of a narrow groove he also acquires a resourcefulness 
and a certain rough-and-ready adaptability that are of value. 
Perhaps that is the next step back to the old loyalty: perhaps 
this spirit of assertion is the necessary bridge to that other 
consciousness of self that makes you only the more valuable 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


259 


servant of others. But it is a long step and a strong step over 
the chasm, and it cannot be taken — while you stand and look.’ 

Robert folded up his manuscript in his own neat way and 
laid it aside. For the first time he had the complete joy 
that comes of sharing. He had written his little scrap, he 
had shared the fruits of it with another human being. He 
felt — it was absurd of course — as if Shakespeare were not so 
far away : not the genius Shakespeare who is entombed in 
so many scholarly works, but the personality, gentle, friendly, 
encouraging, infinitely satisfying and kind. 

They sat quiet a long time and neither of them was con- 
scious that any time had passed. 

“I loike that,” Miss McGee said at last. She had been 
aroused by some infinitesimal noise, and she shook herself as 
she spoke as if she had just been awaked from a nap. “I 
loike ut. ’Tis true.” 

Robert turned slowly round from the fire and looked at her. 

“Do you?” he said — he meant “like it.” 

“I do,” Miss McGee returned. Her voice was grave. “ ’Tis 
true. I seen ut with me own eyes scores an’ scores o’ toimes. 
They comes out here loight-hear’rted an’ koind-hear’rted, bless 
’em, an’ they’ll do things fer the love of the things. But when 
they been out here a whoile ...” 

She paused. 

“ ’Tain’t good ” she said, “fer Mary there to be that much 
took up with clothes.” 

As every woman does she had carried the general over to 
the particular: and then the reconciliation was still simmering 
in her mind. 

“Sure it’s different fer me,” she said. “I loves clothes 
meself . . . ” 

She paused. 

“Whin I see them things Mrs. Glassridge there gits over 

from the other soide ” she stopped “sure, it takes me breath 

away,” she said. “I feels happy. Jes’ to look. Them loines! 
The cut of ut all ! Ef I could tur’m out things the way them 
things is fixed,” Miss McGee said, “I — I never would want 
to roise up from doin’ ’em.” 

She stopped again, gathering her ideas together as well as 
she could. 

“But Mary Garry ain’t made that way,” she said, “be- 
lieve, we. She never was. She wants clothes so she kin git 
over the folks the way she wears ’em. ’Tain’t loike me. . . .” 


26 o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


She stopped again. 

“Mary didn’t oughter have ’em the way I should. She 
don’t know ” 

She looked at Robert with that curiously intent look her 
eyes had at times: she meant of course — what she was striving 
to say was that the artist in herself that made her love 
beauty for itself gave her a right to possess beauty that Mary 
Garry should never have. 

“Ain’t ut Gawd’s trewth I been ta’alkin’, eh, Mr. Fulton?” 
she said. 

“Yes,” said Robert, “it is.” 

He felt this was a complete sequence to his paper. He was 
entirely satisfied. 

“It’s my birthday to-night,” he said suddenly. He didn’t 
know why he said it. He certainly hadn’t meant to say it, and 
no one was more surprised than he when he heard the words. 

“Is ut?” said Miss McGee. She too was surprised. She 
hadn’t been thinking of birthdays. “Why in thunder didn’t 
ye tell me?” she went on reproachfully. “I’d ’a’ had a birth- 
day koind of a meal fer ye. An’ I was late,” she went on 
remorsefully, “an’ Mary there an’ all ...” 

She took her chin out of her hands and leaned back in 
her chair. 

“Oh my, say, ef that ain’t too bad!” she said. 

“It’s all right,” Robert said — he was smiling again. “I 
liked having things as they were. I didn’t mean to tell you at 

all, only ” he hesitated, “well,” he said, with his delightful 

smile, “I don’t believe I’ve ever had such a nice birthday 
before.” 

He was surprised to hear himself saying that. He hadn’t 
realized he felt that way, and yet, now that he had said 
it, he knew that it was true. 

“I haven’t had very many happy birthdays, you know,” 
he said. He hesitated again. “In fact my birthday — ” he 
stopped. “My birthday,” he went on with a slight effort, “is 
one of the things perhaps that shouldn’t ever have been 
there. ...” 

There was a pause. 

“But it is there,” he said after the pause, and quite naturally 
once more, “and so we must make the best of it.” 

In the second that followed Miss McGee’s mind made some 
lightning journeys. Whatever record of speed new inventions 
attain to, they never attain the speed of that oldest of inven- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


261 

tions, the human mind. In the almost infinitesimal fraction 
of a second that passed after Robert had finished speaking, 
Miss McGee’s mind went clear round the world. She realized 
in a flash something that Robert hardly meant her to realize — 
then, at least. She understood in a way she had never under- 
stood even the paper she had just listened to and admired so 
much, all that he hadn’t said. In some inscrutable way her 
mind had lit, in the course of its voyage round the world, 
on just that fact that Robert himself most tried to ignore. 
It lit on it, seized it, made it its own — and in making it its 
own, the love for Robert that in Miss McGee had smoldered 
so long, sprang into a blaze. Pity is akin to love. When 
the two meet there is a mighty conflagration. 

“Sure, ef yer bir’rthday’s nothin’ to yerself,” she said very 

gravely, “ ’tis somethin’ to me it is, Mr. Fulton. Ye’ve ” 

she stopped. “Ye come into me loife,” she went on hurriedly, 
“the way the drink o’ water comes whin ye’re thir’rsty. I 
was thir’rsty, Mr. Fulton, when ye come on here an’ ye gave 
me the drink. I — I’m not thir’rsty now,” she said stooping 
to the fire and beginning to make it up. “I — I’m contint. Ef 
I kin git my wor’rk fixed an’ fix yours someway — so ut 
goes . . . I ast nothin’ more.” 

She raked out the fire from the lowest rib of the grate and 
prepared to put more coal on. 

“Don’t put that on, Miss McGee,” Robert said, and he laid 
a restraining hand on her wrist — it was the first time he had 
touched her except to shake hands. “Don’t put it on. I must 
go.” He kept his hand on her wrist. “You’ve been good to me,” 
he said, “and it’s you who have made my birthday a good day.” 
His fingers, only half-consciously, slid round her wrist and 
held it tight. “I’ve had a happy evening, Miss McGee, and 
I didn’t expect it.” 

He gently let her wrist go. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

Their eyes met. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 

T HIS thoroughly pleasant evening was the beginning of 
unpleasantness. Hardly was it over when all sorts of ob- 
jectionable things began to happen. Not to Robert. His 
life continued to be merely the thing of unpleasantness it was; 


262 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


he just kept on going to Market and coming home again and 
wishing all the way there and back that he wasn’t where he 
was. A dismal prospect, but in the day’s work. 

The definite unpleasantnesses that began to rain down from 
heaven fell on Miss McGee: she it was who began to make 
the eternal human discovery that bad things don’t come alone. 
First Beta Hendricks died. Beta Hendricks — from whom the 
annual Christmas card came — was the very old customer who 
had turned into a friend and who had “gone on to” New York 
and there become transmogrified into the Head of the Maternity 
Hospital Katie McGee visited on her hegira in the States. Beta 
had belonged to a family of four daughters — Robert had often 
heard about it all! And when old Pa’a Hendricks had gone 
the way of Pa’as, the daughters had had to “turn to” and 
make their livings. Beta had trained for a Nurse; and when 
her time of training was up, she had gone further and fared 
better, and Katie McGee it was who had made her first white 
linen “Sister’s” clothes. Miss Hendricks occupied in Miss 
McGee’s mind the place next the Weltmans. She hadn’t seen 
much of Beta for many years. Indeed the only positive meet- 
ing between them had been that one visit Miss McGee had 
paid to the Maternity Hospital when Beta as Matron had 
presented her friend with the bawxes of talcum and the sample 
bottles of stuff — that Polly and Belle Weltman had afterwards 
seen good to use up. Robert could do with Beta as little 
as with Polly and Belle: he detested all three. If he dis- 
liked Belle and Polly’s hats and their factory chatter (they 
were workers in a pickle factory, in New York City), Beta 
Hendricks’ first letter back to “the bunch,” as Miss McGee 
and Beta’s three sisters had appeared to be called, he ab- 
solutely loathed. “Girls,” the letter had said, “I want you 
to know what I done. I washed a nigger-man last night, and 
cut his toe-nails.” This was Beta’s first effort apparently in 
the direction of gaining her bread; and heartily did Robert 
wish that her efforts had been in any other direction. He 
abhorred the nigger. His toe-nails made him creep. Yet Miss 
McGee, never tired of this condensed example of wit and humor 
combined, went on telling him about this letter and reciting 
it aloud — till Robert sometimes felt as if he could bear it no 
longer. When he heard therefore that Beta Hendricks was 
dead, he was unable to prevent himself from feeling that 
sentiment of relief that does come over us when we hear that the 
earth is rid of some one we don’t like. However, it was 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 263 

also impossible to watch Katie McGee’s grief at the loss of 
her early friend without sympathizing with it. Katie did noth- 
ing by halves. She mourned Beta. “My, she was the truest 
lady,” she kept saying. “She was one good thing, Mr. Fulton, 
be-lieve me, Beta wa’as. She was the best friend, the truest 
gir’rl . . . an’ now she’s gawn. I shan’t see her never again. 
Ef I could ’a’ watched by her one noight . . .” That was the 
saddest bit of the situation. Beta had died away in New York 
and Miss McGee couldn’t sit by her dead body one night. It 
seemed as if her friend had been torn from her. She went 
back to the old days when she had gone to the Hendricks — 
whose main occupation before the death of Pa’a seemed to 
have been to cut up clothes and make them over again. “My,” 
Miss McGee said, “I remember when Pa’a had his awperation 
on his eyes. D’ye think Pa’a’d go to the hawspital there? 
No, Sir. Old Man Hendricks had the dawctor come to him. 
An’ when he did come an’ he swore a oath, Pa’a says he 
shouldn’t have the awperation done at all.” Miss McGee sat 
shaking her head, a very monument of woe. “Sure, Mr. Ful- 
ton,” she said, “them was the good ole toimes. Pa’a there 
was one good man. He’d sooner ’ve been bloind all the days 
of his loife than he’d been awperated on by a man that spoke 
a oath.” She sat shaking her head slowly and sadly and gaz- 
ing deep into the fire. “We persuaded um in the end,” she 
said, “but ’twas a close ca’all. The dawctor, he says, ‘ ’Twas 
the oath slipped out of me mouth, Mr. Hendricks, an’ me not 
notussin’.’ He awperated at the finush. But them Hendricks 
there . . .” Miss McGee sat contemplating the past of the 
Hendricks in the red ashes of the fire. She said no more, but 
Robert inferred that it was a fine Past, a grand Past, a Past 
that could not be repeated in the present day. He was glad 
Beta Hendricks was dead, he didn’t feel as if he should have 
cared to know Pa’a, he didn’t want to resurrect that particular 
Past — he wished Miss McGee would talk of something else. 
And when she did it was only to quote once more the nigger’s 
toe-nails and the cutting of them. . . . 

Hardly had Beta’s death passed into the circle of things ac- 
complished and done, when poor Mrs. Morphy’s fate came 
upon her. She had been getting worse and worse since the 
preceding fall. She had become more and more unbearable, 
poor soul, to those around her; and when at last — because she 
could no longer help herself — she permitted investigation by 
a doctor, her disease turned out to be the disease of which poor 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


264 

humanity is most afraid. It was a cancer from which poor 
old Mrs. Morphy was suffering. She had allowed it to go 
too far for operation. Death lay straight before her. 

She didn’t look on death as a great adventure. She didn’t 
have any high-flown notions about it one way or the other. 
She simply, odd as it may seem that Mrs. Morphy should 
have clung to life, didn’t want to die. She had lived in filth 
and poverty and a great deal of ignorance and discomfort 
and desperate pain for a long time past: and yet she clung to 
life. She clung desperately to it. She didn’t want to die. 

She was taken away to her daughter Nonnie Finn’s. Mar- 
guerite McKennay would have none of her. “Can’t Ma’a go 
to hawspital, eh?” she enquired. “We can’t do with no nursin’ 
here.” And she returned to her contemplation of bridge and 
the teas that accompanied it. 

So Nonnie Finn took her mother home to her own slatternly 
kindly place, chock-full of children as it was: and, without a 
thought of any other way, she added the nursing of a 
desperate malady to all the rest of the things she had to do. 
Danny came home drunk and knocked her about as usual. 
The last baby wept and the babe to come made her sick in the 
morning and weary at_ night. Mrs. Morphy died slowly to the 
tune of children coming arid children come: and all the time 
she was dying, she wanted to live. 

Miss McGee couldn’t get over it. She could criticize Mrs. 
Morphy when she was there, but as soon as her old friend 
was removed, hopelessly suffering, to the Finns’ house, she be- 
came almost as perfect as Beta. “I got crawssways with her, 
God forgive me,” Miss McGee kept saying, “the very la’ast 
toime I dressed her leg. She had one on me, the poor thing, an’ 
I answered her shar’rp. I £xed her with moine. I shouldn’t. 
I should ’a’ bitten out me tongue. She’s gawn now an’ the 
very la’ast toime we got on/the scrap ...” 

Over this little squabble, too, Miss McGee was inconsolable. 
All her patient dressing of the leg, twice every day, all winter 
long; all her runnings here and there when she was tired, to 
and fro from Semple’s drug-store and Dubois’ grocery; her 
coaxings of little Monsieur Dubois to let her have bottles of 
beer, yes, and glasses of gin, too, on tick; the little sums ex- 
pended by herself that poor Mrs. Morphy had never had funds 
to repay — all these things were dropped out of Miss McGee’s 
consciousness as if they had never been. “We got on the scrap,” 
she kept reiterating, “an’ she tha’aht the wor’rld of me, Mrs. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


265 

Morphy done. ‘Sure ’tis diver,’ she’d say, ‘the way ye shake 
them bottles o’ milk to mix up the cream with the skim ere ye 
popple ut out.’ The poor soul” Miss McGee would conclude, 
“ ’tis diver she’d think ut ef I hild up me finger an’ thumb 
’tis that much she tha’aht of me!” 

By the time Beta’s body had been brought back to Montreal 
to be buried and Mrs. Morphy’s ground-floor across the court 
was empty and bare, it was May. The winter was over and 
gone. In the extraordinarily hard winter of 1917-18 the cold 
was so intense and lasted so long that even in the beginning of 
May there were still lumps of hardened snow on the streets of 
Regalia; and the ruts were all filled up with ice. But round 
these relics of winter spring was beginning to show itself. 
The sap had long risen in the trees; the delicate and ex- 
quisitely beautiful early spring skies of Canada — opalescent and 
most diaphanously lovely — were things of the past. The sun 
had already got power. The branches of the trees against 
the miraculously blue sky were beginning to be faintly tinged 
with green. As yet, it was only an indication — a haze through 
which prisoners, shut up inside the northern winter for long 
months looked, wondering if it could be true. But as each 
day went by the green grew more perceptible; the branches 
lost their statuesque nakedness and became clothed with rich- 
ness and color: by the time Victoria Day came round Regalia 
was in her spring dress. The slushing thaw was behind — 
summer, short and burning, 'was ahead. 

In the last week of May the whole world looked as if it had 
put on its best dress for a party. Everything animate and in- 
animate seemed to be rejoicing, except Miss McGee’s heart — 
and that was clad in black. No knocking about that life could 
give it could make that heart less tender. Miss McGee loved 
her friends in exactly the same proportion that she hated her 
enemies, and she had now reached that rather melancholy 
period of life when it is impossible not to realize that no new 
friends, however charming these may be, can ever take the 
place of the old friends who are gone. At forty-seven the loss 
of a friend is like the loss of a tooth. No new tooth will 
grow and no new friend will grow, and artificial replacements 
of teeth and friends are — artificial replacements. They can- 
not be the real original youthful thing. 

Besides these two calamities all sorts of minor afflictions were 
also laid on Katie McGee. It seemed at last as if she must be 
the younger sister of Job. Mrs. Savourin was laid low in her 


266 


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basement by an attack of sciatica, the result of the spring flood- 
ings of her kitchen. Forthwith all her sins were forgotten,, 
and she grew a pair of wings. “The poor thing,” said Miss 
McGee, “lyin’ there in that hell of a place. Them Buildin’s,” 
she continued fiercely, “didn’t oughter be here. They ain’t 
places fer hogs. ’Tis a dar’rned shame us perishin’ with the 
cold an’ damp an’ the rich not knowin’ what truck to chuck 
their mooney on.” Miss McGee was excited. Once more she 
went Bolshevist. Had there been anything to shoot at in this 
moment of revolt, she would have shot. Robert hardly recog- 
nized her in this character of revenge. 

“What could I do?” he said, quite practical for once. “Does 
Mrs. Savourin need money? I can give her some.” 

“Ye’ll do jes’ nothin’ of the koind,” Miss McGee said, return- 
ing from Bolshevism at the slightest suggestion of an under- 
standing between Robert and Mrs. Savourin. “You leave ut 
be, Mr. Fulton. I’ll fix her. That Mrs. Savourin here I want 
you to know,” she went on impressively, “ain’t fer no gen’lemen 
to have no truck with. She don’t know the way to behave. 
I’m lookin’ after her. She’ll be a’alroight, don’t worry.” 

It is all very well to be sorry for people but one has to keep 
one’s sorrow in moderation. Miss McGee felt that the subject of 
Mrs. Savourin’s illness had better not be mentioned to Robert 
again. 

Then Cassie Healy was carried off from her attic to the 
hospital. She had been in and out (principally out) of work 
for a long time, and with her qu^er Irish pride she hadn’t 
said anything about it to anyone. She had just quietly 
starved. She had never had more than one eye (that was 
one of the things for which Miss McGee had been most 
apologetic on the occasion of the Christmas festivity — she had 
felt that a woman really ought not to be without an eye, and 
that when the time came for showing her to Robert in some 
mysterious way, it was Cassie’s own fault) and of late the other 
eye, strained by its over-use, had shown signs of giving out. 
In the end someone had gone into her room and found her sick 
of a fever — and she had been taken to the hospital for in- 
fectious diseases, away down by the river-side. 

“An’ jes’ see Miss Healy now,” Miss McGee said to this 
in a sort of desperation. “Look at her, the poor soul. What’s 
she did I want to know? She never done no har’rm to no 
one an’ now see, she has to go down in that hawspital 
there. ...” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


267 

Miss McGee, in common with all other Penelopians, regarded 
hospitals with a deep suspicion. When anyone was carried 
away in an ambulance, as poor Cassie was, there was much 
lifting of hands and shakings of heads. The Penelopians 
gathered at the street-door or hung out of their windows not 
to miss the treat: and it was with a ghastly pleasure that they 
saw with their mental vision Cassie, dead, and being imme- 
diately cut into by a band of ravenous surgeons. They loathed 
these vultures who satisfied an obscene curiosity by prying 
into the privacies of Cassie’s interior — and they got the liveliest 
delight in imagining the scene. 

“That gir’rl, eh/’ they said to one another. “Say, that poor 
thing!” They had never taken the slightest interest in Cassie 
before. “Say, my, I guess she’s fixed a’alroight. She ain’t 
cornin’ back to Penelope’s Buildin’s.” 

It was after Cassie’s departure that the state of the Buildings 
themselves began to prey on Katie McGee’s nerves. There was 
no doubt about it that the long law-suit was not improving the 
status of the place. The class of inhabitants was “going down,” 
as Miss McGee put it. Well-doing workmen with their law- 
ful wives were beginning to avoid Penelope’s Buildings as a 
habitation for their families; there were — a bad sign in a 
poor part of any city — hardly any “kids” to be seen playing 
about on the steps or in the passages. More and more were 
the Buildings falling into the hands of night-hawks, male 
and female, and single in the eye of the Law. Things even 
so respectable as dope-men could have been welcomed now by 
Miss McGee. Men and women went out from the Buildings 
at night — not always to work on night-shifts either — and came 
back in the small hours: and well-dressed men were seen on 
the stairs at unseemly times, damning the Buildings by the 
cut of their clothes and the way they wore their hats. The 
Buildings were on the down-grade. Soon, Miss McGee felt, 
they would reach the abyss when money would be paid in bribes 
where no bribes should be taken that there might be no question 
of midnight raids. 

“My, to think what Ma’a’d say, the poor soul, ef she could 
saw her little Katie now,” Miss McGee began to say to her- 
self: she didn’t very often confide just these matters to Robert 
Fulton. “Them things there opp’site. A bunch o’ tar’rts!” 

It was not long before the things opp’site began to take such 
a hold on Miss McGee’s nerves that she simply had to speak 
to Robert about them. “My wor’rd, ef I didn’t git all tied 


268 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


up with them dope-men bein’ here, Mr. Fulton, eh,” she said, 
“ye remember? My,” she went on, hesitating a little, “i could 
do with that bunch back now. I wisht they wa’as back. They 
ain’t the wor’rst yet though I tha’aht they wa’as.” 

Robert, who was eating an egg, looked up. They were at 
supper together. 

“What’s the matter now?” he said. It was well on in 
May when Miss McGee said this and he had* been hearing 
nothing but woes and sorrows for some weeks past, and he 
was tired of it. “What’s the matter?” he said. He did not 
like complaints. 

“Them gir’rls back there,” Miss McGee said, nodding in the 
direction of the dope-men’s old flat. She paused. “Ever saw 
’em, Mr. Fulton, eh?” she asked. 

Robert shook his head. 

“Ye’ll know the koind they is, eh?” Miss McGee said 
further. 

Robert hadn’t known. But when people stop and shake their 
heads and change their voices and don’t say things . . . 
Robert recognized the kind of girls they were. 

“Oh,” was all he said, however. 

“Ain’t ut ah-ful, eh,” Miss McGee went on, her eyes filling 
with tears. “Here’s you an’ me that’s a gen’leman an’ a lady, 
an’ you with yer elegant education an’ all, fixed so we have 
to live nex’ door to bad women an’ thugs. For I bet you,” 
Miss McGee proceeded with emphasis, “that man that’s come 
an’ fixed umself roight there in poor Mrs. Morphy’s home is 
one thug. He has all the look of ut. Be sure he ain’t 
what he should be. . . .” 

Robert feared Miss McGee was going to cry, so he tried 
to think of something to say. He liked crying as little as most 
men do. He therefore bestirred himself to offer comfort. 

“If there’s a law-suit on about these Buildings,” he said 
after a moment’s consideration, “and we can’t any of us have 
any repairs or anything done till the case is settled — can the 
flats be re-let at all?” 

He stopped for a moment’s more consideration. 

“I don’t believe they can,” he said, “and I fancy you could 
have those people turned out if you wanted to. Who lets the 
flats?” 

Miss McGee’s tears dried up as if by some hidden mechanical 
process. She sat regarding him with that pleasure she always 
showed when he was “smart.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


269 

“Say, my, don’t ut take you, eh, Mr. Fulton, to think of 
things,” she said in a pleased voice. “Sure, I never would 
think o’ things meself.” She stopped a moment considering. 
“ ’Twill be Mrs. Savourin lets them apar’rtments there,” she 
said, “an’ fills her pa’ackut with the mooney.” 

She continued to regard Robert with her beaming smile. She 
hadn’t looked so happy since Beta Hendricks died. 

“Sure,” she remarked, “I never did saw sech an elegant 
moind as yours, Mr. Fulton. ’Tis the treat to be besoide ut.” 

She paused, and heaved a deep sigh. 

“An’ to think,” she said, “there’s you as smar’rt as a penny- 
piece an’ ye can’t ear’rn enough to live decent. Fer ut ain’t 
decent here in Penelope’s Buildings,” she went on, after a 
minute, “an’ yet I don’t know where ye’ll foind the same 
accommodation fer the mooney.” 

She paused again, and then she began to laugh. 

“Oh my, ain’t that Savourin there the clever Jane, eh!” she 
said. “It’s her’ll be ownin’ the Buikiin’s soon an’ us paying 
her the rentals. Say, ain’t ut great!” she said. 

There was no shadow of irritation against Mrs. Savourin 
in Miss McGee’s voice. The very vexation of having to live 
in a place like Penelope’s Buildings seemed to have momentarily 
passed away. Everything was swallowed up in the admiration 
for Robert’s smartness and the Janitress’s cleverness. “Ain’t 
you the smart-y, eh!” And “Ain’t she the Jane!” she kept say- 
ing over and over as she moved about, clearing away the 
dishes. The bunch of tarts had disappeared into the place 
where things go when they are no longer thought of. They too, 
apparently, were only part of Mrs. Savourin’s abounding 
“wit.” 

Robert sat regarding Miss McGee’s delighted face over 
the top of his egg-shell. Once more it came over him that 
women were queer things. He wondered if God had wholly 
foreseen what He was doing in creating them female as He 
had done. There were moments when Robert felt doubtful 
if God had altogether foreseen what would happen. This 
was one of the moments. 

“I guess that woman knows the nigger in the fence when 
she sees um, eh,” said Miss McGee. And then in a cozy 
happy tone she added, “Say, let you an’ me have the good 
evenin’? I feel foine.” 

She stood, with the butter-dish in her hand, looking at 
Robert. 


270 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“There ain’t nothin’ loike the s’rpoise, eh, for makin’ ye 
feel smar’rt,” she said. “I tell you, you braced me a’all up.” 

She went about with a brisk light step. She hummed a little 
tune as she put the dishes in the kitchenette. Robert sat 
watching her for a bit, and then he pulled a book out of his 
pocket. He felt more doubtful than ever about God’s ab- 
solutely omniscient foresight. He began to read. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 

I T was in the last delicious days of May and in the lovely 
early days of June when the Canadian spring came with 
such a burst and a rush that it seemed to her she could 
almost hear the trees coming into leaf, that Miss McGee 
realized that Mickey Ryan had failed her. It was her nature 
to be cheerful, and during the days of the sunny windy April 
when she had hoped, she had gone about with a brisk springy 
step, saying to herself, “Never moind. ’Tis cornin’. ’Twill 
come. Mickey Ryan’ll see to ut.” Not even Beta Hendricks’ 
death, not even Mrs. Morphy’s mortal illness had been able 
quite to take out of her the hope she had for her coming life. 
She had had the utmost trust in Mickey. She hadn’t even 
made excuses for him when he hadn’t rung her up, when he 
had made no sign. She had simply thought, “Bless um, he’s 
waitin’ on the roight job to come along,” and she had gone 
about her work as usual, quite willing and happy to wait. 

Now she knew she had been wrong. She knew he wasn’t 
going to do anything at all. One day it “came over her,” 
as she said: and she was stricken old. It was impossible 
not to notice the change in her. Now she went to her work 
with a listless, don’t-care step: and though, when she got 
to her customers, she did her best, it wasn’t the old best. 
It was a sort of try-and-do-what-you-can kind of work that 
she turned out, and the customers (who were sharp enough in 
some things) soon saw the difference in the gowns and even in 
the re-modeled garments into which she didn’t try to put bits 
of herself any more. 

Her joy in dressmaking was absolutely gone. It was gone, 
never to be re-captured. She detested the sight of a gown, she 
wasn’t interested in what her customers wished her to do 
with it. She sat listening to their copious explanations with no 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


271 

suggestions of her own: and when they had finished she set 
to with a sort of desperate industry, and tried to work out 
the impossibilities they had suggested. The result was what 
that kind of work always is. 

The whole point about Miss McGee’s earlier work had been 
that though she had not been able to turn out “creations” she 
had been able, just by her interest in the work and her early 
love for it, to turn out something that “had style to it.” She had 
made a bold try for success; and as happens with the people 
who care for their work enough to do that, something had 
happened. Her gowns had not been the gowns of Paris as- 
suredly, but they had had something about them that dis- 
tinguished them from other gowns. They had been nice. 
It was Miss McGee’s own eyes that discerned the faults in 
them. To the general, more-easily-satisfied eye, they had looked 
well, and the customers who wore them had been satisfied. 

Now it was different. With her going to Mickey Ryan 
Miss McGee had put once for all the whole idea of gowns 
behind her. When Mickey had seemed kindly and helpful 
and had made her believe in his desire and his power to “do 
something” for her, she had thrown the idea of dressmaking 
so far behind her that, now the time came to pick it up 
again — she simply couldn’t find it. She didn’t care for clothes 
any more. The sight of a lovely model gown, all fresh from 
the great work-rooms of the world, would still, of course, stir 
something in her. She would smile involuntarily as it was 
shown to her. But she didn’t want to try and copy it. She 
didn’t want to re-model something so that it looked like it. 
She wanted to be clear of the whole dressmaking art, and 
never try her hand at it again. And the fact that during 
the whole of the rest of her life she must be content to cut 
and snip and sew up and rip again and struggle after effects 
she never would attain to, was a horrible prospect. 

She faced it. She made no outward difference in her life. 
She went out from Penelope’s Buildings at her usual time, 
and came back again as she had done for so many years. 
The difference was inside. All the way out in the morning 
and all the way back at night was now filled up with melan- 
choly meditation. Miss McGee did not feel, as she had felt 
nearly twelve years earlier, actively rebellious. She did not 
feel, as she had felt then, that it was wicked — on the part of 
something or somebody — that she was being used as she was. 
She felt no desire to do anything special in the line of revenge 


272 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


on the world that had treated her, as she thought, unjustly. 
She merely felt a sort of dull ache that was like a toothache of 
the mind, and a determination to bear that ache and to say 
nothing about it. She was nearly twelve years older than 
when she had had her first nervous break-down, and her 
vitality was just twelve years less vital. 

What wounded her was that Mickey had failed her. Miss 
McGee had, in a good many ways, rather a cynical outlook 
on the world. She distrusted a great many men and women; 
of customers she expected less than nothing at all: she was 
not easily taken in by protestations. But there was one 
weak spot in her. She trusted her early friends — she thought 
well of them, she would have done all in her power to help 
them: and she believed that they were made on the same 
mold as herself and would have gone far in their efforts to 
help her in any trouble. It was in this spirit she had gone 
to Mickey Ryan. “Sure, he’s a swa’all fella now,” she had 
said to herself, “but he’ll not have forgotten Kitty McGee.” 
She had gone in that surety of being welcomed, in that cer- 
tainty of being helped, that admits of no doubt at all. And 
she had been received by Mickey Ryan, as she thought, in that 
spirit of kindliness that she had expected. Possibly her be- 
lief in Mickey was a sort of relic of the early time when she 
and he had been the youngsters together and both he and 
she had believed in everything and everyone: it is youth’s 
prerogative. Later years had shown Miss McGee with great 
clearness that you can’t believe in all things or all men, and 
perhaps even less in all women: and so she had grown 
at least a sort of surface layer of cynicism. But underneath 
that layer, as water flows swiftly beneath a thin topping of 
ice, Miss McGee’s beliefs had lived and moved and had their 
being. She had believed deeply in the back of her mind 
that, should the time ever come when she might have to go to 
Mickey and ask his help — he would help. She had never 
imagined that he wouldn’t help. If anyone had said it to 
her she would have been, not so much indignant as amused. 
She built on Mickey Ryan’s honor as sh£ built on her own. 
And now, when Mickey Ryan’s honor fell down in ruins 
before her — what was she to believe in at all? 

Her religion was left to her, of course. And it was both 
a comfort to her — and it wasn’t. Miss McGee was religious 
and she was ecclesiastical too. She loved both God and her 
church: but since neither God nor her church were true secure 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


273 


refuges to her in time of trouble, probably she did not love 
either so much as she thought she did. People who truly trust 
in God don’t have nervous break-downs. And people whose 
bent of mind is ecclesiastical keep on going to church and 
finding comfort there whatever may happen to be happening 
to them. Miss McGee’s trust in God had already failed her 
once at the time of her mother’s death and the flight of Mr. 
Mitt. And her ecclesiastical sense could never have been 
so deep as she thought it was or she would never have been 
able to contemplate, as she had done, marrying Mr. Mitt, a 
heretic, rank and not-to-be-hoped for. Miss McGee had been 
brought up by her mother to be a “good Catholic.” She had, 
from her babyhood, been trained to follow out rigidly all the 
forms of her church. But she wasn’t originally cast in an 
ecclesiastical mold — nor, perhaps, in a very religious one either: 
and, though she went on as she had been taught to do, and 
though the artistic bit of her found comfort and joy in the 
celebrations of her church, it didn’t go as deep in her as she 
thought. At every crisis in Miss McGee’s life the church fell 
away from her. She went to its services as usual, but in any 
deep sorrow she didn’t find the consolation there she expected to 
find. Rose’s attitude to Mac and his religion was simply in- 
explicable to Miss McGee. That anyone should put the love of 
man after respect for the church . . . frankly, that to Miss 
McGee was incomprehensible. She herself would have chosen, 
every time and always, the man^first — and let the church go. 
And away, too deep down for her to be able accurately to 
get at the thought, was the vague sentiment that God would 
not be against this choice. That He would understand. Make 
allowances. That, if it were to come to a tussle, God would 
take the woman’s side here against the church. . . . 

But these things Miss McGee not only did not put into words; 
she would have repudiated them as sinful, devilish thoughts had 
anyone put them before her. Yet she believed them all the 
sam*e, and at any time of her life she would have shown 
that she believed them by acting upon them — had she had the 
chance. 

After Mickey’s failure to respond she just went on. Since 
that first successful telephoning she had telephoned twice again, 
with discreet intervals between each time of “ringing up.” 
She had had short sharp interviews with the “young lady at the 
’phone.” And the upshot of the interview in each case was 
that “Mr. Ryan was busy. Could you ring again?” And the 


274 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


second time — Miss McGee had understood. She had, more- 
over, seen Mickey Ryan one day on the street; and then she 
had understood even better. He had been going along, jaunty, 
expensively dressed, with an expensive cigar in his mouth, 
and an expensive smile on his lips; and he had been chatting to 
another man, quite equally expensive, and they had evidently 
come from lunching expensively together. Mickey Ryan, to 
Miss McGee’s eyes, had exhaled money. She had been doing 
some shopping for a customer, and she was in her working 
clothes, not dressed up carefully in the best she had to make 
an impression on the young ladies who waited on her in the 
shops. She hadn’t expected to do shopping and had therefore 
not dressed herself accordingly. Now, when she caught sight 
of Mickey she felt suddenly unutterably shabby. A tear in 
her right rubber obtruded itself on her consciousness. The 
thought had flown through her mind, “I shall have to git meself 
a new pair”: and simultaneously, inextricably mingled some- 
how, there had shot through her brain a picture of her old 
worn disreputable rubbers as they would appear to Mickey: 
and then she thought of the money she would have to put out to 
get the new pair — and rubbers so dear since the War. And 
then she looked at the expensive rubbers of Mickey, and guessed 
at the fine high-grade boots he wore underneath his expensive 
rubbers . . . 

It was that day she had realized — for the first time perhaps 
in its entirety — the gulf, the unbridgeable chasm — that money 
and the lack of it makes between two human creatures. She had 
realized that, however much Mickey and she had been the 
youngsters together, they were no longer that. Mickey of the 
yar’rd had expanded into Mickey of the Smart Restaurant and 
the Ly-mousine. He was a wealthy man, an important citizen 
of Regalia, a man who could travel to New York City (Miss 
McGee’s Mecca) and back again and never think of the ex- 
pense. And she was the poor little dressmaker who went out 
sewing by the day, thankful if she had a dollar in her pocket, 
able to travel nowhere and to see no one, doomed to live in 
Penelope’s Buildings amongst harlots and thieves. . . . 

When Mickey had gone past, Miss McGee came out of the 
doorway into which she had slunk involuntarily when she first 
saw him approaching. His round, slightly hoarse, jolly voice 
rolled still on her ear-drums. She could see his fat prosperous 
back as she looked along the street. And then in a slit of 
looking-glass down the edge of the tailor’s window by which 


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275 

she had taken refuge, she saw her own face. Old, faded, 
pinched, lined. And the thought passed through her mind 
that if it had been a man’s face in the mirror it wouldn’t 
have mattered so bitterly. The point was that it was a woman’s. 
She was a woman. You can’t change your position and leap 
into new fortune if you are a woman and forty-seven. Miss 
McGee stood still a minute and regarded herself in the slit 
of mirror. She noted remorselessly each dint that time had 
made in her face, and each scar that worry had left. “Ye’re 
ugly,” she said to the reflection in the mirror. “Ye’re ugly , 
God help ye. It’s no wonder Mickey’ll have nothin’ to do 
with ye. ...” 

She accepted at that moment all that the world held for 
her. She just took things as they were, once for all, and 
made the best of them. She glanced down at her torn rubber, 
and accepted that with no feeling of animosity. She glanced 
again at Mickey’s disappearing back, and she accepted that. 
How had she ever thought he would help her? What pos- 
sible earthly right had she had to intrude upon his prosperity 
with her unpardonable adversity? How had she ever imagined 
that such a little unimportant subject as Kitty McGee’s un- 
fitness for her work at the age of forty-seven could interest 
him ? Quite suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, Miss McGee 
caught sight of the world at a new angle. She saw it as a 
hard round thing against which, if you were outside, you 
might cast yourself in vain and find no entrance — unless you 
came with your entrance-money in your hand. She had no 
money to bring. She never would have any. And Mickey 
had money. He brought his entrance-money in his hand, and 
the door of the hard round world flew open — and he entered 
in. When Miss McGee stepped down from the doorway in 
which she had hidden herself, when she stopped looking at 
herself in the tailor’s mirror and prepared to go back to her 
customer’s with her shopping-wares in her hand, she felt — it 
had taken only a moment — twenty years older. She felt no 
longer a middle-aged woman, she felt an old woman. She 
saw life differently from what she had ever seen it before. 
She felt quiet — docile — acceptant. Conscious that nothing she 
could feel or say or do could alter the hard round way the 
world was made. She knew that she was outside — for good. 
She felt old. 


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CHAPTER XXXVIII 

W E are all of us twenty and many of us are five hundred, 
human beings in a single skin, and therefore no one 
of us can go on feeling exactly in the same way for 
very long at a time. Each member of the blessed company 
wants his turn. 

Miss McGee did not go on uninterruptedly feeling quiet 
and docile and acceptant after the, to her, terrible moment 
when Mickey Ryan passed joking by. She had flashes of re- 
sentment against that hard shut round world — as in the Ante- 
Mickey-Ryan days. But on the whole, after that momentary 
sojourn in the doorway beside the tailor’s shop (one of the 
hundred beings shut up inside Miss McGee’s skin had noticed 
with approbation what lovely socks there were in the window — 
good socks — socks such as Mickey would wear — costly socks), 
she felt ready for the worst. For the first time in her life 
she felt patient; in other words, the shock of finding Mickey 
to be what he evidently was — the ordinary unhelpful man 
whom she had taken to be one of the helpful angels ! — knocked 
(to use her own phraseology) her out. Nothing specially 
seemed to matter any more. 

Patience — that overrated virtue — is not much more than a 
failure in vitality. Youth goes full-tilt against the wind- 
mills of life without a thought of the consequences. It is 
only when youth — never really a matter of years — departs and 
age stands hesitating before life’s windmills that patience makes 
its appearance. You decide to bear — not to attack: you are 
old. Miss McGee had reached this unenviable state. She 
was, as years go, middle-aged. Up to the day when Mickey 
passed by — yes, notwithstanding the nervous break-down — she 
had been young. Now she was old. The vision of her hard 
round world obsessed her. It circled obstinately before her 
mental eyes and she, as obstinately, remained outside it, watch- 
ing. She knew what the outer darkness meant now. She was 
in that outer darkness — with a good many million more. 
Inside that revolving world were the lucky people who had lots 
of dollars and cents, who were able to chuck money about and 
get what they wanted with it; who were able, for instance, to 
buy those socks in the tailor’s window — wear them — throw them 
aside when they needed mending: the Mickey Ryans and Mrs. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


277 

Glassridges of the universe, in fact, who went about the world 
laughing expensively, and scattering what ought to have been 
other people’s entrance-money as they went along. 

Miss McGee accepted it. She had moments, as I say, of re- 
volt, and flashes of her old desire to “belong,” but in a gen- 
eral way she took things as they were — and, not so much 
made the best of them, as endured them. Under these cir- 
cumstances it hardly seemed to matter that Mac, in a letter 
to his “Old Lady,” sympathizing, and sending, in the shape 
of a check, a tangible proof of his sympathy — “and there’s 
plenty more where that comes from, Old Lady!” — had an- 
nounced his engagement to a young lady of Pittsburgh (where 
Mac had found a resting-place for the sole of his foot), Insola 
Wenberg by name: an angel, though not yet disembodied, in 
disposition, it appeared. Mac was happy. He announced his 
engagement as most young men announce their engagements. 
He evidently, and quite rightly, felt that nothing of the kind 
had ever happened to anyone before; and he was, also quite 
evidently and rightly, bent on making Insola happy — and in 
making himself happy in “possessing” her: for that was the 
way the idea of marriage presented itself to Mac. Miss 
McGee accepted this with the rest. She had expected it. Had 
she not foretold that Mac would marry? And though he was 
marrying a little bit sooner than she had anticipated, still, 
that was what men like Mac did. He had taken the love- 
fever badly with Rose as his microbe. He had been ready 
to give Rose all, and now he was going to give Insola Wen- 
berg — not perhaps quite all, but all that was over from his 
love for Rose. Mac had cared for Rose. There was no ques- 
tion about it. He had had that — that shyness about her that 
genuine love brings with it. But now — Rose had sunk to 
that place in his consciousness where first loves do sink when 
the man meets the second love and marries her. Miss McGee 
did not believe that Mac had forgotten Rose; but he had 
shoved Rose to the back of his mind — as an impossibility. 
Mac was nothing if not practical. And the romantic streak 
that runs through the most practical Scot he had transferred 
to Insola. He was ready to bestow on her all the handsome 
gifts that Rose might have had. He would devote himself to 
Insola just as he would have devoted himself to Rose. He 
would give this new wife of his (so Miss McGee phrased it 
to herself) the fur coats and “good” jewelry that Rose might 
have had: and, as the years accumulated, Rose would be 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


278 

shoved further and further back in his mind until he would 
never think of her at all. There would be no room for Rose 
Garry amidst the preoccupations Insola would create with 
her own nature and her troubles and worries and the sons 
and daughters she would doubtless bring forth. Domesticity 
is nice, but it is the most smothering thing in existence; and 
the romantic streak is the first of all the streaks to get covered 
up and buried and put out of the way. 

It was poor consolation to Miss McGee to think that pos- 
sibly on his death-bed (when things have a way of changing 
values) the Rose Garry episode might rise up untarnished and 
just as it had been when it happened. Miss McGee knew 
very well that it was Roge that Mac cared for . . . but what is 
the good of thinking of things on your death-bed when it is 
too late to do anything . . . ? Miss McGee tried to dismiss 
the subject from her with an impatient sigh. 

As for Rose, she said nothing at all. A Sunday or two 
passed without her coming to see Auntie (that did not matter 
so much now when Mrs. Garry and Ag dropped in each week 
on their way to church), and when she did come she looked 
much as usual, except that she was perhaps a trifle thinner, 
and that there were darker lines than usual under her eyes. 
And her lips, always thin, seemed thinner somehow, and more 
closely pressed together. 

“Hulloa, Auntie,” Rose had said, exactly as usual, on enter- 
ing the room. “You all right, eh?” 

“Foine,” Miss McGee had answered, without looking at 
her niece, “how’s yerself? Heard ye been sick, eh? Stopped 
away from the Bank?” 

“For a day,” Rose said, with an extreme nonchalance. “Got 
chilled some, I guess. It was nothin’ at a’all. I’m alright. 
I’m fine.” 

There was nothing more to be said. 

Miss McGee went to see Mrs. Morphy once. She took with 
her a rose (which she could ill afford to buy) and a cake and 
a pint bottle of gin. It was the first time in her life that 
Miss McGee had, on her own initiative — she had once or twice 
put it to Mrs. Morphy’s account or begged for it on Mrs. 
Morphy’s credit at Little Dubois’ grocery store — bought such a 
thing. She felt a certain hesitation even in asking for it; 
she almost felt like adding, “ TTis for Mrs. Morphy, eh, the 
poor soul, Mr. Dubois,” but she thought that would be mean, 
so she didn’t. “I don’t care” she said to herself instead, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


279 

defiantly, coming out of the shop with the wrapped-up bottle 
under her arm. “Sure why should I care? She’s goin’ to 
have ut. I guess it’ll fix her some.” 

It had fixed Mrs. Morphy some. When Miss McGee (she 
had taken a day when she was “laid off” as she called it to go 
and see Mrs. Morphy) reached Nonnie Finn’s she found a 
scene of confusion and dirt indescribable. The house — it was 
hardly better than a shack — was situated on the outermost 
borders of the city. It was not unlike the shack in which poor 
old Mrs. McGee had died of the same malady twelve years 
before. The street-car railway reached to within a few hundred 
yards of the small irregular street, of which the Finns’ house 
was the very last: and beyond the tiny plot of green in front 
of the parlor window, there stretched an expanse of rough un- 
tilled, uncared-for ground that looked as if it might stretch thus 
uninterruptedly to the North Pole itself, and one fancied the 
winds that would come sweeping over that ground in the 
dark bleak months of the year. When Miss McGee knocked on 
the door of Nonnie’s house, first with her knuckles and then 
with a metal ball that formed the apex of the handle of her 
wrist-bag — the electric bell which she had tried first of all 
was out of order and wouldn’t ring — all that happened was a 
confused sound of romping inside the house and someone 
crying, a boy shouting, Nonnie’s ineffectual voice rising now 
and then in feeble gusts above the uproar of her babes. 

“My,” Miss McGee said to herself with a good deal of 
emphasis. She went on knocking. “Sure, save us,” she said to 
herself, standing out there on the wooden step, “ ’tis outsoide 
them passengers is !” The vision of the inexorable world going 
round and round and just stopping now and then to let a 
monied passenger in and then circling on again, assailed her 
with renewed force. Nonnie Finn, when she did come to 
the door, looked dragged and wearied and almost inexpressibly 
dirty. Mrs. Morphy was dying by yards rather than inches, 
in a state of almost equally indescribable dirt, and equally 
indescribable other things inside. But they both welcomed Miss 
McGee, and Nonnie made tea, and they drank it, and poor 
Mrs. Morphy put spoonfuls of gin into her cup — and cheered 
up even as she did it. And Miss McGee heard Mac’s letter 
all through — she had previously heard only an abstract of the 
contents over the telephone: and she was shown a photograph 
of the great Insoia that Mac had sent, immediately, evidently, 
after posting his letter. Insoia was a fine rounded young 


28 o 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


woman with an experienced mouth. She stood in a posture emi- 
nently suitable for the photographer’s camera to grapple with. 
She wore an unembarrassed smile — which showed her excellent 
teeth. She was immensely self-possessed: unlike Biddy Ryan, 
she evidently did know enough to come in at the first drop of 
rain, and she was acquainted with the art of “fixing herself;” 
she was perceptibly one of those passengers for whom the 
revolving world would in due time stop revolving for a second 
in order to allow her to pass in. She was entirely suitable 
to be Mrs. Mac. If he had “wed” written on him, she had 
“success” written all over her. 

“Sure, ef Rose Garry ain’t been the fool-gir’rl,” Mrs. Morphy 
remarked once again, this time with a change of tense to mark 
the progress of events. “She moight ’a’ had um, McGee fer the 
takin’. An’, take my word for ut, Mac was the man. He 
was a man,” Mrs. Morphy went on. “I guess that Mac there 
was the cleanest, straightest koind of a bo’oy ye’d foind in the 
wor-rld.” 

“Rose’ll live to be sawry, I guess,” even poor humble Nonnie 
put in with an unaccustomed emphasis of utterance. 

Once more there was nothing to be said. It was self- 
evident. What was Rose Garry ever going to get out of her 
church to compensate her for Mac? Miss McGee came away 
after tea so profoundly miserable that she hardly knew how 
to bear it. She was sorry — oh, how sorry! for Mrs. Morphy 
(whose farewell, compounded of affection and gin had been 
truly grateful and warm-hearted and eternal), she was sorry 
for Nonnie, and for Rose and for herself, even for Mac, little 
as he seemed to need it — Mac, who was shoving his love for 
Rose to the back of his mind. And she felt sorry for Cassie 
Healy and for Mrs. Savourin and for the bunch of tarts op- 
posite, yes, even for them — could they help themselves, the 
bad gir-rls! And little Bellerose, the letter-man, who was tied 
by the heels with rheumatism, who had nothing laid by to keep 
a wife and five children on, and a sixth child coming. She 
was sorry for them all. She felt as if she had taken them 
all into her heart and as if there weren’t room for them there, 
and they were crowding and hurting her. And Robert! Was 
she sorry for him . . . ! 

Robert was to Miss McGee the one unbearable thing in the 
whole abominable mess. She had thought within herself, and 
with how much joy, that when Mickey had found something 
for her and she was “placed good” and doing justice to 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


281 

Mickey’s recommendation, she would once more apply to the 
Ryan office and find something for Robert. At the bottom 
of her mind, this idea that she would “place Robert good” as 
a sort of consequence of placing herself, had been a factor in 
pushing her on to Mickey and his influence. Had Miss McGee 
never met Robert she probably would have gone on dress- 
making with a gently fading interest in her work — till the end. 
The meeting with Robert had changed everything. It had 
opened up somehow new outlooks on life. She had begun with 
Robert’s advent on the scene, to want life to be “worth while,” 
as she said. With the vision of Robert in the flesh had come 
another vision of Robert; still in the flesh, but different — 
because life was different. And to Miss McGee, as to all loving 
women, the vision of perfect happiness had come along with this 
idea of being able to help the man she loved. She had gone 
to Mickey on her own account first, because policy lay that 
way; but she had said to herself all along, “Soon’s I’m fixed 
good, I’ll fix him ” She meant Robert. And, in her mind’s 
eye, she saw Robert big, famous, inside that revolving world 
and setting it afire with the flame of his genius. She saw 
him rich, respected, looked-up-to, happy: and she saw her- 
self — how? — well, perhaps as a beloved companion of this 
genius; something that not so much shared in his happiness 
as a harmless yet quite necessary trifle that basked in the 
rays of it. She had seen herself in these past few weeks of 
hope connected with Robert, linked to him by ties of the 
deepest friendship that merged insensibly on her side into 
untieable bands of love. And now it was finished. Robert, 
so far as she could see, was doomed to sit outside the world, 
watching with herself the circular revolving mass with all 
the good things inside it, and never even hoping to possess the 
necessary dollars and cents to make it stop for a second — in 
order to enter. It was frankly unbearable. The thought of 
Robert Fulton sharing her abstinences, and for life, broke up 
Miss McGee’s dispirited patience; whenever she thought of 
it — she tried hard not to think of it at all, for what was the 
good! — she felt, surging up inside her, the old youthful im- 
patience and the old desire to Tilt at the windmills that stood 
between her and happiness; she wanted once more to assert her 
refusal to accept, and the old fighting spirit, the desire to be 
up and at the enemies who stood between her and life struggled 
for mastery. And then the hopeless feeling would descend on 
her again. What was the good? What was the good? That 


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kind of patience that is only another name for the realization 
of disability to contend with the dragons of life descended on 
her, and she accepted. She was old. 

There was one thing left that Miss McGee could do for 
Robert Fulton. She could take him to Frejus Mansions and 
introduce him to “the Lady” there. This idea had often oc- 
curred to Miss McGee before, but for some reason best known 
to herself, she had always put it behind her. Miss Eileen 
Martyn was evidently a successful worker in the medium in 
which poor Robert was, as yet anyway, only a totally unpaid 
amateur. Miss McGee had seen, lying about the little living- 
room which served also as the Lady’s study (Miss McGee 
sewed in the bed-room when she was there) masses of typed 
stuff — rapid work, illegible with written-in corrections, very 
different from Robert’s clean, clear, legible script! — and she 
had said to herself, “ She knows the ropes, I guess!” She had 
a shrewd guess that the Lady not only “did herself good,” but 
that she also had influential friends who might “help.” She had 
very often said to herself that if she were to take Robert along 
to the Frejus Mansions his fortune would be made. Thinking 
this, as she assuredly did, why had she not taken Robert, 
along? She never answered that question very accurately or 
succinctly when it presented itself to her. She knew that, of 
all her customers and friends, Miss Martyn was the only 
one with whom Robert would have anything in common. She 
recognized that they spoke alike, thought alike very likely, 
were interested certainly in the same things. Miss Martyn 
would be a “grand” friend for Robert. They would sit talk- 
ing by the hour : and Eileen Martyn, for all her inaccessibleness 
on certain subjects — she was entirely reserved, she never let fall 
any fact, however unimportant, about her life — was most ac- 
cessible in certain other ways. She didn’t seem to have any 
notions of “class” — not even. so many as Robert. Miss McGee 
could perfectly fancy Miss Martyn seated beside Dan at a 
Mrs. Morphy supper-party and making herself quite agreeable. 
She had a sort of dim fancy that, not only would Robert 
like her, but Dan too. She said to herself, “She’d fix ’em.” 
She was pretty sure that if it had been the Lady that she 
had taken down with her to Mac’s goin’-away festivity, she 
would have been a raging success. . . . And yet, she had 
never mentioned her— -to anyone. She had kept the Lady and 
her mode of life, her oddness, her quick sympathy, her mys- 
terious unlikeness to anything she — Miss McGee — had ever 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


283 

seen before entirely to herself. She had never gone so far 
even as to mention the Frejus Mansions. Robert was entirely 
unaware that such a place as the Frejus Mansions existed, and 
Miss Eileen Martyn was perhaps the only one of all Miss 
McGee’s customers of whom he had never even heard. 

Now, it seemed as if the Lady were the only resource. It 
seemed to Miss McGee that, did she truly wish to help Robert 
out of his hole, it was the Lady’s assistance that she must 
beg. She could take Robert along and “present” him. Then 
the Lady would, in her turn, go on “presenting” Robert to 
other people. And — so Miss McGee put it together in her 
mind — no sooner would these influential friends of Miss 
Martyn’s have Robert “presented” to them than they would see 
what a jewel of great price had been cast at their feet. They 
would bend down, pick Robert up, and not only ask him 
to come up a seat higher, but lead him with their own hands 
to the very top of the table. That was the way it presented 
itself to Katie McGee: and then, when Robert was at the 
top of the table . . . she wouldn’t see him any more. Miss 
McGee was of course accustomed to the ways of a New World, 
where it is a question of getting on or getting out. If you 
get on you sail into another horizon where your old friends 
see you no longer; and if you get out, you similarly sink into an 
atmosphere where, for your friends, you no longer exist. Miss 
McGee herself was about the only person she knew that had 
neither got on nor got out. She had stayed where she was, 
and it seemed now, that she was going to stay where she 
was till the end. Well! Let Robert have his chance. Why 
should she stand in his way, bless um. At this point — she 
thought it over and over and over again — there always came 
a full stop in her meditations. It seemed to her as if she 
could not go on. It was as she was coming back from 
visiting Mrs. Morphy that, at long last, she did go on. She 
forced herself a little bit further along this road that led — 
to what! 

“I guess it’s the roight thing to do,” she said to herself, 
coming to a dead stop in the lonely lane that called itself 
The Regency Avenue where the Finns’ house was. “I guess 
there ain’t no other way. I guess that’s what I’d oughter do.” 
She walked down the Regency Avenue, seeing nothing of the 
long bare stretch of dismal nothingness that alone separated 
Danny and Nonnie Finn and Mrs. Morphy from the North Pole. 
“Look at um,” she thought, seeing in her mind’s eye the trim 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


284 

boy Danny Finn was once in the old days when Old Nancy, 
his mother, had taken such a pride in him. “Look at Danny 
there,” she thought, “that’s what comes ef ye go the wrong 
way.” And, in her mind’s eye — that clear, clear place! — she 
saw Robert also, in some time to come, down at heel, his 
neat trimness gone, unkempt and unshaven, perhaps even his 
kind smile dimmed. She felt she could not bear it. She 
felt as if that would be the one w^bearable thing in this life. 
Rather than that she would . . . take Robert to the Frejus 
Mansions. She would take him there, and, of her own free 
will, she would give what she had of him away. This time 
she did not cry. She looked at the bleak desolation round 
about her, her eye glanced over the piles of bricks, the long 
planks of wood, the girders of iron, that at some future time 
were to make and complete the Regency Avenue, and she 
thought, “I’ll do ut, God help me. I’ll do ut.” She walked 
on to where the car-line was — it was the very end of the long 
straight line the Regalia car-line took — and she stood, waiting 
for the car that went once in every twenty minutes. After she 
had waited ten minutes or so, the car came in sight. She 
knew it would draw up at this termination of the line — it 
would turn — the man at the wheel would descend from his 
perch and do something mysterious with the electric switch . . . 
and the car would be turned for its journey back into Regalia 
city. She watched the car coming speeding along with the 
graceful rapid gliding movement of the electric car; and as 
she stood there she suddenly drew off her glove and brushed 
the back of her hand across her eyes. It seemed to her for a 
second as if she couldn’t bear to look on this world any more. 
“Oh, my,” she said, and a great throb of her old youthful 
impatience shook the very heart in her body, “Dar’rn. What’s 
the good of ut?” 

She got into the car and took her place, and sat with her 
face turned to the window, looking out. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 

I T was on one of those wonderful evenings in June that 
make the interminable bleakness of the Canadian winter 
seem like a bad dream that Robert and Miss McGee went 
to see the Lady. They had come home from work and they 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 28$ 

had had their usual simple, on this occasion rather hasty, 
evening meal: and then, not “dressing up” at all, but simply 
putting on their every-day working hats, they had taken the 
road for the Frejus Mansions. Robert had made no objection 
to being taken there. He didn’t expect much from it, not 
even anything specially pleasant. He liked Miss McGee thor- 
oughly, but he put no confidence in her judgment — as to 
the “niceness” of persons. What she thought a Lady, he prob- 
ably would think — anything but that. He had formulated 
no distinct idea of “the Lady” in his thoughts; Miss McGee 
had remained rather obstinately silent about her and he had 
nothing on which to mold his ideas; but he more or less 
expected something ' in the nature of another Mrs. Morphy 
(rather better than that, perhaps, but on the same make) and 
for Mrs. Morphy, even in her dire adversity, he had no more 
than pity: a pity quite untinged by, and wholly unrelated to, 
love. He didn’t like Mrs. Morphy or Nonnie Finn or any 
other of Miss McGee’s friends whom he had come across, 
and he didn’t expect to like “the Lady.” He simply acquiesced 
in Miss McGee’s desire to take him there (he had not been 
let into the secret that the visit was purposed for his own 
good) because it would have been more trouble to do anything 
else; and, rather in the disposition of the lamb that is being 
led to the slaughter, he walked along by her side. 

It was very lovely. Few things can be more lovely than a 
June day or the sky of a June evening in Regalia. As the 
two went through the grounds of the Regalia University there 
was a sort of translucence — the “diamond quality” of Robert’s 
Canada Book — in the air. The trees stood out, faintly green, 
magically silent, as if they were cut out against the unbelievably 
blue sky. The air was full of the clear stillness that precedes 
the short twilight of the spring Canadian days. 

“Ain’t ut great?” Miss McGee said, as they entered the 
Campus grounds. 

The big elms and maples towered above them, the grass 
was as yet the tenderest green; and just at the entrance of the 
grounds a wonderful birch-tree — tall and slim and graceful 
excessively — swayed lightly on the evening air and seemed to 
look down on them with a protecting kind of innocence. 

“It’s great, ain’t ut?” Miss McGee said again. She stopped 
a second to hearken to a robin (the big prosperous Canadian 
robin, cousin to the English thrush) insistently singing “Love — 
love — love” to his mate. 


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OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Lovely,” Robert said. 

He too stood still and looked about him: and the note 
of the robin, so sweet and so clear and insistent, knocked at 
something in his heart and said “Open!” 

“It almost makes you love Canada, a night like this,” he 
said, with a sigh. 

Miss McGee did not answer. When Robert said things 
like that, emphasizing the fact that he was not a Canadian 
and did not wish to be One, her heart always sank. The 
robin’s note ceased to be so transcendently beautiful for Miss 
McGee. She drew herself together and walked on. Robert 
caught up with her in a big stride. 

“Yes,” he said, “it’s lovely, and I’m glad I’ve seen it.” He 
stopped a second. “I am glad I came out, you know,” he 
said, “in spite of everything. I wouldn’t have missed 
Canada ...” 

He paused a moment. 

“But, for that matter, I suppose we’re always glad we did 
the things we did,” he said. “It’s so unbelievable we could 
have done anything else.” 

He stopped again. 

“Anyway,” he finished up with his nice smile, “I’m glad I 
met you. It’s only those winters ...” 

This was about all the conversation they had, going to the 
Frejus Mansions. Their conversation was never very much 
worth recording — few conversations are. It is only in books that 
people set to with long dissertations on this and that, flattening 
each other out with pages of eloquence . . . 

They reached Frejus Mansions and went up the broad stone 
steps that were topped with two great “vayses” — as Miss McGee 
said “Elegant!” — full of geraniums and heliotrope and lobelia, 
with long streamers of greenery trailing over the pots and hiding 
the blank hideousness of them; and they passed in at the big 
front door, and made their way up the stairs. Frejus Mansions 
was just not quite grand enough to have a Janitor in live:/ 
sitting in a chair by the door or an elevator boy waiting day 
and night in a cage; so they trudged up-stairs flight after 
flight; and when they reached the top of the house and stood 
for a minute regaining breath, directly under the cupola in 
the roof, Miss McGee said, “I guess ye’ll loike her a’alroight.” 
It was the first direct remark she had made about the Lady: 
and before Robert had had time to collect himself and ask a 
question, she had pressed the electric bell, and immediately 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


287 

the click of the typewriter that had been audible for the last 
flight of stairs or so ceased inside; they heard a rustle of 
feminine clothes along the passage, and a light tread of some- 
one coming to open the door. 

Robert never forgot that first appearance of the Lady. She 
stood on the threshold of her flat, dressed in the loose blue 
Russian blouse she always wore when she was at home and 
at work — Miss McGee had run up half a dozen of them for 
her: and as she stood there, there was something tremendously 
friendly in the expression of her eyes. Robert could not have 
told the color of her hair, nor whether she was tall or short, 
not even whether she was young or old. He didn’t know 
whether her eyes were blue or brown. He never noticed how 
they were set in her head. He just saw their expression. 
It seemed to him an all-embracing expression — friendliness 
itself. And, as he stood outside the threshold of the flat, look- 
ing into those eyes, nothing else in the whole world seemed 
to matter. 

“Come in,” the Lady said, breaking the spell: her speech was 
quite like other people’s, once she spoke. “I’m glad to see 
you. Come in.” 

They stepped inside the little hall. 

“I’m going to ask you to come along to my dining-room,” 
the Lady said. “It’s dreadfully untidy, but you won’t mind. 
You see, I always work there.” 

She was leading the way as she spoke down the long cor- 
ridor of a hall to the other end of her flat : and when she pushed 
a door a little more widely open and hospitably motioned her 
Visitors inside the room, Robert saw that it was an end room 
looking straight into a tree : and that, beyond the tree, visible in 
a charming sort of way between its branches, the hill of 
Regalia rose up and formed a sort of background to the whole. 
The sun was just going down behind the hill and a flood of 
evening light poured into the room, making it radiant and 
beautiful — making even the typewriter that stood on the table 
by the window a beautiful object — and lighting up the piles of 
manuscript that were scattered in an untidy yet workwoman- 
like confusion about the room. 

“Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it,” the Lady said, catching the look 
in Robert’s eye. “It’s this room and this view of the sky that 
keeps me in this flat. I can’t make up my mind to leave it, 
though it’s too big for me and there are ever so many dis- 
advantages.” 


288 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


She moved two chairs a little bit forward. 

“Can you find room,” she said very pleasantly, “amongst 
all my mess?” 

They sat down. 

Then it was that it burst upon Robert that he had been 
brought there as a kind of pensioner for whom work had to 
be found. Miss McGee had kept, as I have said, discreetly 
silent on this subject, knowing intuitively that if she were 
to tell Robert the whole facts of the case he wouldn’t come 
at all. She had therefore represented the visit — as a visit and 
nothing more. Now that it exploded on Robert as a business 
proposition, the shock was great. 

“You want to find some literary work, Miss McGee tells 
me,” the Lady began with her business-like sense that there 
was no time to lose. She had not been in Canada nine years 
for nothing! “What kind of work do you want?” 

Robert was aghast. The flood of evening light ceased to give 
him pleasure. He ceased to see the little room as a haven of 
rest and delight: the commercial atmosphere of the New World 
seemed to rise up around him with a steamy unpleasant odor 
to it. He felt that he had been brought here on false pre- 
tences — cheated into coming. For just a second he felt quite 
unreasonably angry. . . . 

And then — what did it matter! That lack of vitality which 
was perhaps inherent in him, which certainly the diet of buns 
and tea on which he subsisted fostered and made more evident 
every day, asserted itself. What did it matter after all, if Miss 
McGee took things into her own hands — and interfered. He 
would much rather she had not interfered, Jbut since she had ! 

“I didn’t know I was coming in search of work,” he said: 
he couldn’t help that little repudiation of the business proposi- 
tion. “I didn’t even know I was in search of literary work 
at all.” 

He glanced up at the Lady smiling a little. His eyes shyly 
met the friendly look in her eyes. His anger evaporated — 
and, like every other woman, the Lady said to herself, “What a 
nice smile!” Miss McGee, sitting by in some trepidation — she 
hadn’t reckoned on the Lady being so instantly business-like — 
calmed down. “It’s a’alroight,” she said to herself. And, with 
a curious drawing at her heart, she noticed the eyes of the two 
of them as they met. “I guess it’ll be a’alroight for um,” she 
said. She felt her under-lip “go,” as she expressed it, and she 
set her teeth on it for a second. “Ye dam-fool,” she said to 
herself. “Play up. What did ye bring um for . . . ” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


289 

“Well,” the Lady said, “suppose, before we discuss it any 
further, we have some coffee.” She saw there was something 
amiss. “Wait just a second.” She got up, “I’m my own maid- 
of-all-work, you know. I’ll fetch it. I shan’t be a minute.” 

She went out of the room. 

“If you still want to talk,” she called out from the kitchen 
just on the other side of the wall, “I can hear. I’m not 
very far off.” 

And they could hear her moving about, and the clang of 
a metal tray as she set it down on a deal table next door. 

They didn’t talk. They sat in the little room saying nothing 
at all; and the sun went down behind the hill and left the sky 
full of glory, and the glory shone into the little room and 
changed it into one of our Father’s mansions — a mansion of 
rest in this case: and Robert sat back in the comfortable chair 
the Lady had given him to sit in, and just for the momenjt 
he put aside all thought, all worry, all regret — in that moment 
he just lived . . . more completely, perhaps, than he had 
ever lived before. The little home-like noises from the kitchen 
next door were pleasing to him. They seemed to drift into 
some cleft of his being, and fill it up. For the second — just 
the merest passing second as it was — he felt at home. He felt 
that he had come home, quite unexpectedly, utterly surpris- 
ingly. But he felt that he was home — at last: and he sat 
silently enjoying it. 

When the Lady came in, carrying her big copper tray before 
her in a practical matter-of-course way that suggested she 
brought her own meals in that way three times a day, it still 
seemed just as it should be. There was nothing surprising to 
Robert — and yet, at the same time it was the most surprising 
thing that had ever happened to him — to be there in the Lady’s 
little flat. He felt with one part of him as if he had always 
been there; as if he and the Lady were old old friends, their 
friendship dating from — where? Some unknown, and yet im- 
mensely intimate place. He felt in a dreamy sort of way 
as if he had seen her countless times before come into the 
room carrying that copper tray in that practical businesslike 
way, as if he had watched her — how many times — put it down 
on the table, and take the plates of biscuit and cake off it and 
place them near her guests, and then sit down and pour the hot 
steaming coffee into the blue and white cups. He felt as if the 
coffee had an aroma of its own that only he had smelt before — 
as if he knew by heart the little twisted spoons in the saucers 


290 


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of the cups, as if the movement of the Lady’s hand, high 
above the cups as she poured the coffee into them, were some- 
thing inexpressibly familiar — and known. 

It was one of those mirages known to us all. We have all 
felt that sensation of having lived through something before: 
as if, from where or from how far back who can say, we 
remembered, as if, without being able to put it into words, 
we yet know infallibly what will happen next. Robert felt 
certain that the Lady would rise in a certain way, hand 
the cup to him in a certain way, that she would smile as 
their eyes met — that, as she smiled, the air would become 
charged, as it had done when she opened the door, with a 
great all-embracing friendliness. 

It all happened as he knew it would. The loose Russian 
blouse, looking so intensely blue beside the copper tray, seemed 
inexpressibly familiar to him. And the background of the gray 
wall of the room with the radiance of the evening sky turning 
it to pinks and yellows — how familiar that was! And the 
loose mass of papers . . . 

In the same instant that all this passed through his mind — 
or was it his soul? — Robert felt that his own life, that life 
down there in the Arundel Market, was unbearable. He felt 
to it, not the steady dislike and the heavy resistance he had 
felt at the Po-ut’s lecture, not the nausea he had felt at Mrs. 
Morphy s supper ; in this instant of remembrance and of charm 
and of delight, he felt to it the sort of physical repugnance 
that a woman feels towards a man to whom she owes a physical 
debt that she feels she cannot pay. To Robert it seemed as 
the Lady handed him his coffee — “Tell me if it isn’t right,” 
she said in her pleasant voice — as if he were degraded by 
leading the life he led. Penelope’s Buildings rose up, as it 
had risen up on the night of Mrs. Morphy’s party, as a 
sinful place to be in. He felt, for the second, as if he had 
no business to be in this little study, so clean, so self-respect- 
ing, so charming in its very bareness and look of transit- 
oriness — as if the Lady were the merest traveler on 
life’s high road and were shortly moving further on — he felt 
that, rather than go on in this poverty-stricken squalid life 
into which he had fallen, it were better to be dead. The old 
forgotten time — where was it? — that surged up through his 
sub-conscious self into consciousness and poignant feeling at 
the mere movement and sway of the Lady’s hand, seized hold of 
him. It said, “Come back. Come back.” And, even whjl§ 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


291 

he was saying, “Where? Where ?” — it passed. He was simply 
in the Lady’s study, a pleasant little room looking out on 
Regalia’s hill, and the Lady herself was sitting at her table 
looking across her coffee-tray at him with her friendly eyes. 

She was saying, “I wonder what we could do. Have you 
ever done any journalism, Mr. Fulton?” 

He pulled himself together with an effort. 

“No,” he said. “I haven’t.” 

And, as always when he spoke to a stranger, his speech 
seemed to him inadequate, hopelessly inefficient, lacking in 
sense — silly. 

“I don’t know what I could do,” he said, after a second. 
And then, with a sort of impulse to show himself as he felt 
himself at the moment to be, “I’m no good, you know,” he 
said. “I really am not ...” 

And when he met the Lady’s friendly eyes he thought to 
himself, “But if all the world had eyes like that, I would 
be some good. ...” 

They drank their coffee — and it was good coffee. Robert 
hadn’t tasted coffee like that since he came to Canada. The 
stuff at the Great North-Eastern Lunch Counter of the 
Dominion was only coffee in name and Miss McGee’s coffee 
wasn’t much better. This had the aroma of the true thing. 
It was strong and warm and beautiful in color. It seemed to 
pour something into Robert’s veins, so that they ran with life. 

“You should never have come to Canada, you know,” the 
Lady said when they were all warmed and alive with the 
coffee. 

“Shouldn’t I?” said Robert. 

The Lady shook her head. 

“Oh, I’d have told you not to,” she said. “Canada isn’t a 
country — it’s a temperament. And your temperament isn’t 
Canada and Canada isn’t your temperament.” 

It sounded oddly familiar. And then Robert remembered 
that he had said something like that himself in the Canada 
Book — but not quite so tersely. He smiled at the Lady. “Yes, 
I know,” he said. 

“And besides,” the Lady went on, “you like ideas. Oh, 
it’s plain you do,” she said, shaking her head at him, “just to 
look at you. And Canada hasn’t any ideas,” she went on, “ex- 
cept about gasoline tanks from one end of it to the other.” 

She looked steadily at him and her face was both merry 
and sympathetic. 


292 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


“Canada’s mind is a gasoline tank,” she said. “You shouldn’t 
have come.” 

“I expect you’re right,” Robert said. He felt half-pleased 
and half-annoyed— Miss Martyn’s obvious sympathy half- 
soothed and half-chagrined him. 

“Oh, I know I’m right,” Eileen Martyn said: but the way 
she said this didn’t sound either so downright or so egotistical 
as it looks written down. 

“Well,” she said, after a bit, “we must see what we can do. 
You’re here — and you certainly mustn’t stay as you are.” 
(Miss McGee had evidently been frank then, on the subject of 
the Market! Robert was once more, or rather this time 
perhaps, one-quarter pleased and three-quarters annoyed.) 
“Let me see,” the Lady was saying meditatively. “I’m sorry I 
just have to go away — I’ve got a job to write up that everlasting 
West — and I’m just back from the South where I was writing 
up the rice-fields of Arkansas. . . . I’ll be away most of the 
summer. When I get back in the fall,” she said, turning di- 
rectly to Robert — it sounded odd to hear her use that trans- 
atlantic expression with her conspicuously un-transatlantic voice 
— “will you come and see me again?” 

She stopped and regarded Robert. 

“I would like you to come often then, if you will,” she 
said. “We’ll have lots to talk about, you and I. And that 
Market must come to an end. Oh, that’s quite absurd,” she 
said, her eyes still on Robert, “we can do better than that” 

And with that she seemed to put the purely business part 
of the interview behind her. 

“Don’t hurry away,” she said. “I’ve nothing to do. . . 

Miss McGee had made a movement to go as soon as she per- 
ceived that the commercial aspect of the visit had been thor- 
oughly looked at and put aside for the time: it was in response 
to this movement that the Lady asked them to stay. 

“I’m not busy,” she said; “really,” she added, as she saw 
Miss McGee still preparing to go: and Katie settled back in 
her chair. She didn’t want to stay. She felt a sort of sick 
distress at being there at all. She saw Robert as she had never 
seen him before; and she preferred him as she was accustomed to 
see him in his own corner at her fireside in Penelope’s Build- 
ings. “I guessed they’d meet up a’alroight,” she kept saying 
to herself. “Seem’s them’s bir’rds of a feather ef ever bir-rds 
was. Well,” Miss McUee paused — she looked out of the 
window and fixed her eyes on the hill outside in an endeavor not 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


293 

to see what lay so straight before her — “I guess it has to be. 
It’s fixed that way, I imagine.’ 1 ’ She sat on in a kind of passive 
fatalism that didn’t think it worth while even to make the 
effort to take Robert away again now she had brought him 
into the magic circle. 

Robert, of course, was totally unconscious of Miss McGee’s 
feelings. He felt, now that his momentary anger against 
her for bringing him there at all had subsided, quite quiescent. 
He was perfectly happy where he was. He hadn’t been so 
happy for a long while — never since he had been in Canada, 
and rarely quite so happy as he was at the moment anywhere 
at all. He felt a sense of life stroking him the right way, of 
which he had never been so actively conscious before. He 
felt that he was in his atmosphere, that the little room with 
its littered papers was home, that the evening sky outside, 
that was gradually becoming pearly and faintly diaphanously 
blue in tint, was the right thing for him to look out at. He 
loved the shape of the hill against the evening sky. He liked 
to look at it through the branches of the maple tree outside) 
the Lady’s window. The momentary feeling he had had of 
Miss Martyn’s flat being more familiar than anything else 
he had ever come across had vanished. It was as if a memory 
had just touched him in passing and then gone further — out 
of his reach. Now, as he sat back in his chair, quite relaxed, 
warmed and comforted by the coffee and cake, cheered by 
the dainty way in which it had been served, soothed by the 
sight of the Lady sitting picturesquely, not so very unlike a 
French working-man, in her long blue blouse, he felt merely 
mortal, quite ordinary, conscious neither of anything behind 
this life or of anything to come after it — just living deliciously 
in the Everlasting Now, and wishing it might last for ever. 

The Lady talked intermittently, and her way of speaking 
pleased his ear. It was not that she was specially wise or 
specially brilliant. She said nothing that had not been said 
hundreds of thousands of times before. But there was a pleas- 
ant intimacy in her address, a sort of taking for granted that the 
person she spoke to was a friend that made it pleasant to talk 
to her. She and Robert naturally spoke of Canada — it is the 
eternal subject between the immigrants. And the Lady — who 
had seen far more of Canada than Robert — spoke in Canada’s 
favor . . . in a sort of way. 

“Yes,” she said, “it’s big, and growing, and all that. When 
we come here first we all have, I suppose, that illusion that 


294 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


it is going to grow into something bigger than has ever been 
before. But it isn’t, you know,” she said, after a second’s 
pause. “Canada’s just going to be like everything else — and 
not half so good as our old country for a long, long time ...” 

Miss McGee, sitting silent, wondered what made all these 
people, so she already classed the Lady and Robert, speak of 
Canada as they did. To Miss McGee Canada was It. If 
it wasn’t Ireland itself, it was even better than Ireland — except 
when you wanted to “ta’alk.” Miss McGee resented, not so 
much what the Lady said, perhaps, as the tone she said it in: 
just what had been objectionable in the earlier sections of the 
Canada Book. It was the tone these people took when they 
spoke of Canada! — “Sure,” Miss McGee said to herself, “I’m 
not bound to set an’ hear me country vilified.” She was 
Canadian through and through as she sat in Miss Martyn’s flat. 
For the moment Ireland was merely a myth behind to which 
she felt no inclination to reach back. She sat wondering when 
she could go. 

“Oh, well, of course,” the Lady was saying when Miss McGee 
came out of her own rather resentful meditations again, “there is 
something in it.” She paused. “But what?” — she laughed — “J 
don’t know. It’s provincial,” she went on musingly, “Canada’s 
horribly provincial. Its gasoline mind is all inside the tank — 
it never comes out to see there’s a big world outside. But all 
the same,” Miss Martyn ended up, with a slight change of 
tone, “there’s something there. And what’s more, no one has 
ever caught that something yet . . . not to put salt on its 
tail.” And once more her direct glance met Robert’s much 
more hesitating one. 

“Why don’t you write something about Canada?” she said. 
“You’ve had lots of experience — of a kind. And just the kind 
of experience that ought to be useful to write about. Why 
don’t you” — her voice had taken on the tone of having at last 
something definitely practical to suggest — “spend the summer 
writing up Canada from the point of view you’ve seen it from? 
And bring it me when I get back. You might make something 
awfully interesting of that,” she said. “It might be worth all 
the Arundel Market’s done to you.” She, too, like Robert, said 
“Arundel” (and not “Anmdel”) in her conspicuously English 
accent; and this innocent and quite authentic pronunciation was 
to Miss McGee but another thrust at Canada. 

“Canada’s a man’s subject,” Eileen Martyn went on after a mo- 
ment, with her direct eyes still on Robert Fulton. “There’s noth- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


295 

ing feminine about the Dominion,” she said. “A woman can’t 
tackle it anyhow. I can’t. I’ve tried. You see what you can do.” 

And Robert, as he allowed the Lady to fix his eyes with hers, 
saw himself looking into those eyes with ever-increasing friend- 
liness — perhaps: and reading them what he had written . . . 
about Canada. 

“He’s wrote somethin’ now,” Miss McGee remarked in a 
slightly defiant tone of voice. She felt as if Miss Martyn were 
wrenching the Canada Book, at this very first interview too, out 
of her — Katie McGee’s — hands. “An’ it’s good a’alroight, I 
want you to know,” she continued, with the defiant note becom- 
ing slightly more in evidence. “It’s a Book” 

She rose. 

“I guess we got to be gittin’ home, eh, Mr. Fulton,” she 
said. “ ’Tis late.” 

They walked home silently. As they went through the 
Campus grounds the robin had gone to bed. It was very still. 
The moon came sailing over the tree-tops and it looked down 
on them in between the young leaves. But Robert was conscious 
of nothing with his physical eyes; his vision was turned inward 
— to the evening he had spent. He thought of the other eve- 
nings he would spend, like this one — perhaps: and he thought 
of the long summer without any evening like this one, just a 
long interminable summer of the Arwwdel Market and heat and 
dust and weary boredom. He felt sick with a longing for 
a decent life — for something different. The book that he was 
to have ready for Eileen Martyn on her return from the West 
seemed different now that it was not being conceived under the 
glance of those direct bright eyes. Perhaps he would never 
write it at all. . . . 

“ ’Tis goin’ to be the way I tha’aht ut would,” Miss McGee 
was saying to herself, as she walked speechless at his side. 
“Well, sure thing ut can’t be no worse than the way ’tis an’ I’ll 
stick ut, God help me, whatever comes.” Her meditations 
paused for a moment, and to her mental vision also the bright 
direct glance of the Lady was visible. “There’s one thing sure,” 
Miss McGee remarked to herself, meeting this direct bright 
glance that she saw in her mind with her own much deeper and 
more passionate look, “ ’tis one dam-fool mess of a loife.” 

When they reached the Buildings they parted, with a mere 
good-night, at the door of Miss McGee’s flat. They had not 
exchanged one word on the subjects of Miss Eileen Martyn or 
their evening visit. 


296 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


CHAPTER XL 

R OBERT did not continue this reserve of his about the 
Lady. (He adopted somehow, utterly unsuitable as it was, 
the absurd name that Miss McGee had for her customer.) 
He felt, when the first impressions of the evening at the Frejus 
Mansions had passed off, an impulse to share them; to talk of 
the flat, of the outlook from the flat, of the arrangements of 
things inside the flat — of the Lady herself, her appearance,, 
her talk, her blouse, the way she carried the tray into the 
room. He wanted to talk about everything connected with 
her: and though he would much have preferred talking about 
these things to the Lady herself, in Miss Martyn’s absence he 
consented to talk to Katie McGee. 

For once he did not find an attentive auditor. Miss McGee 
was willing to sit and listen for a certain time : but the moment 
that time was over (it was fixed by rule and regulation in 
her own mind) she turned snappish and wouldn’t hear any 
more. There was no use trying to penetrate this snappishness 
and see what was further inside; it was apparently guarded 
by something impregnable, and no effort of Robert’s could 
get past that impregnability: and yet he continued to talk. 

It was odd that Robert Fulton should talk. He was really 
one of the silent brotherhood, and not meant to talk at all. 
It sometimes seemed as if the visit to the Lady had unlocked 
something inside him — a box, perhaps — and as if, this box 
being unlocked, nothing could ever shut it up again. Starting 
to talk about Miss Martyn, he ended by talking about him- 
self; and though this was exceedingly unlike him, yet he did 
it more than once, indeed, he rather got into the habit of 
doing it: he felt confidential, and he had to tell someone, 
and he told Miss McGee. I don’t fancy he even told himself 
that he would rather have told Miss Eileen Martyn things — 
but if it had .been she that he had been talking to, probably/ 
they would have discussed ideas. Robert was driven back on 
personalities in talking to Miss McGee — his only possible confi- 
dante — because talk about ideas means a preliminary training — 
the “elegant education” — which Miss McGee had never received. 

“When I came to Canada,” Robert said one night, quite 
suddenly and apropos of nothing at all, “I had some money.” 

“Had ye?” said Miss McGee. And then, after a pause, 
she said, “Gee!” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


297 


It was a great surprise to her that Robert had ever had 
money. She somehow had never exactly thought of him like 
that. She had rather taken him as an aristocrat, a thing 
with whom money rarely has much connection — as aristocracy 
shows itself on coming out to Canada. “Had ye mooney,” 
she therefore said eagerly in reply to this remark of Robert’s. 
“Where is ut, Mr. Fulton?” 

Her tone was the tone of one who expects her auditor to 
say, “It’s in my stocking up-stairs,” or something of that kind. 

“Ah, that’s just it,” Robert said. “I lost it.” He was ex- 
tremely surprised to hear himself mentioning his moneyed 
episode at all. 

“Lawst ut!” said Miss McGee. The image now rose in 
her mind of a fat pocket-book, dropping out of Robert’s pocket 
on to the side-walk. “Didn’t ye know enough to put an ad 
in the paper, eh?” she said. 

“Oh, not that way,” Robert said, laughing a little. And 
then, with that slight hesitation we have in confessing our 
stupidities, “I lost it in speculation,” he said. “In mines.” 
There was a dead silence. “It was stupid,” he continued in an, 
entirely casual tone, “but I did lose it and that’s all there is 
about it.” 

He regretted ever having begun to speak of it. 

Miss McGee sat speechless. The loss of money affected 
her as it affects women generally — as something irreparable and 
an affair too tragic almost to be spoken of. 

“Can’t ye git ut back?” she said after a bit, in a low voice. 

Robert shook his head. 

“It’s gone, Miss McGee,” said he. “Last winter’s snow isn’t 
more gone than it is. The scrip isn’t worth the paper it’s 
printed on.” He laughed again — but this time without mirth, 
“especially at the war-price of paper,” he said. He now wished 
to goodness he never had said anything at all. 

Miss McGee continued grave. 

“Ye gotten the — the stuff yet?” she said. “Them papers, 
eh?” 

“Yes.” Robert did answer, but it was the sort of answer 
that says, “Don’t ask any more questions — please ” He made 
a long pause. “The money’s gone,” he said once more, “and 
that’s all about it.” 

For a while he sat looking out at the window — they sat by 
Miss McGee’s window and not by her fireplace now — across 
Drayton Place to where workmen were tearing down Semple’s 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


298 

drug-store on the other side of the way. Semple’s lease had 
run out; he had not been able to renew it: another Penelope’s 
Buildings was about to be raised up in its place. “I was a 
fool,” Robert said, after a long silence, “when I landed here. 
I was a greenhorn. I hadn’t had any sensible experience of 
the world — just School and College . . . and what did they 
teach me there! I never had any real training in anything — 
practical, till I came to Canada. And then of course I never 
had any home. . . .” 

He stopped dead short and sat looking out through the 
open window at the bleak prospect on the other side of the way. 
“You know,” he said, rather slowly, “I’ve had a lonely sort of 
life.” He stopped again, for a long time this time. They both 
considered the fallen bricks of the drug-store and the house 
above it, once built up by hands and now lying in loose untidy 
heaps on the other side of the roadway. 

“The fact is,” he went on, rather quickly, at last. “I’ve 
always meant to tell you — just because you’ve been so good 
to me. I — I never knew my parents. I don’t know who my 
father was, or my mother.” He stopped, and then went on 
more quickly. “I suppose,” he said, “though I don’t actually 
know, that I’m one of those people who haven’t any right to be 
in the world at all . . . as people think. But I don’t know. 
I spent my childhood with a woman who didn’t know anything 
either. She was a kind woman — good to me. She got money, 
of course — I mean, she was paid. . . .” 

He stopped. 

“There always seemed to be money,” he said, “that’s the odd 
part of it. They must have had it between them. I was 
sent as quite a little chap to school. And there I stayed — 
practically — till it was time for me to go to College.” 

He surveyed the dispiriting prospect outside the window very 
attentively. 

“I tried to find out, of course,” he said, “lots of times. But I 
couldn’t. It was all kept very tight. You can keep things 
tight if you want to. The reason things leak out is that 
generally people don’t want to keep them tight, and they evi- 
dently didn’t want me to know. My College bills were paid 
through lawyers. I went to their Firm but they didn’t know 
anything — or they said they didn’t. And Mrs. Allways didn’t 
know anything. I think she really didn’t know. Yes, I think 
she didn't know. . . .” 

“You see why I came out to Canada,” he said. “I wanted 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 299 

to get right away. Begin. I never had any beginning at 
home. . . .” 

He drew a deep breath. 

“Not a real sort of beginning,” he said: and then he went 
on in a quite normal voice. “And, being a young fool that 
knew nothing about the world,” said he, “the very first thing 
I had to do was lose the lump sum of money — they'd settled on 
me . . . for good. So it’s gone,” Robert Fulton said, “and 
there isn’t any more where that came from. Or, anyway, I 
won’t ask for it. And the next thing I did was to throw up 
the teaching post I had come out to take: and then — oh, well, 
then, things went from bad to worse. I didn’t like applying 
to any of the College people, and I went on just getting shabbier 
and shabbier, and nobody would have anything to do with me 
. . . and I don’t blame them. And of course I didn’t know 
anyone here. And how could I write to the lawyers at home 
and beg ! I wouldn’t . . . just because I’d been a — a fool” 

He broke off short. 

“I didn’t anyway,” he said after a bit. “I just drifted down 
into the Arundel Market, and I suppose I shouldn’t have done 
that if I’d been any good. But I did.” 

He broke off short again, and when he spoke it was with 
a note of determination in his voice that Katie McGee had 
never heard there before. 

“Now,” he said, “I’ve got to get out of that. I’ve got to get 
out. Got to.” 

Miss McGee said nothing. She surveyed the dispiriting pros- 
pect on the other side of the road. 

“I don’t know why it is,” Robert went on, “but since the 
other night, when you took me — there, I’ve just felt, what- 
ever comes, I have to get out. I simply must,” he said. “I 
have to. I can’t stay there.” 

Oddly enough, and quite unconsciously evidently, he was 
emphasizing his words the very way the Lady did. 

“It’s a silly miserable little story, isn’t it,” he went on, after 
a pause, “and I didn’t mean to bore you with it, at this length 
anyway. I always meant to tell you. And I want you to know, 
Miss McGee, that I’ve never told it to anyone else — as it 
happens. I’ve let them think what they liked — always: but 
somehow it’s come natural to tell you. And you see, don’t 
you,” he went on, “that I can’t keep on as I am? I have 
to get out.” There was a note of desperation in his voice. 
“I’ve got to,” he kept repeating. 


3oo 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Miss McGee sat looking straight in front of her. The im- 
mediate world she was looking into was a dismal one, but the 
mental world that she was looking into was more dismal still. 
She knew well enough why Robert had been moved to tell 
her what he had told. She knew well enough that it wasn’t 
really to her at all that he was talking: that what he was 
saying, he was in truth saying to the Lady. “When she comes 
home,” Miss McGee said to herself, “he’ll git there.” She didn’t 
imagine that Robert was in love with the Lady — yet. But 
she saw that they were, as she had said, birds of a feather, 
that they would naturally foregather — talk together in their 
voices, that were not so unlike, of the things inside themselves 
that were so very like. She saw herself, not so much an 
outsider, as a poor lost thing. She saw herself with the one 
thing she cared about, not taken from her, but leaving her of 
its own free-will. It was a bitter moment for Miss McGee, 
this moment when Robert poured out of the unlocked box inside 
him all the things she had been for so long eager to know. She 
had wanted to know, not for curiosity’s sake but for sympathy’s 
sake, who Robert was, what his early life had been, why he was 
so lonely, why he seemed so utterly poor and so entirely bereft 
of influence and friends. And now she knew. 

She knew, and this thing she had wanted so much to know 
came in the shape of a sort of blow. She wished she didn’t 
know. She wished Robert had never felt that impulse to 
confide in her. Miss McGee saw the finish, as she called it, of 
their intimacy and of their happy times together. “What’ll I 
do,” she said to herself, “when he’s gawn over to her ! What’ll 
I do ?” Life seemed unbearable. 

“Ye had the har-rd toime,” she said out loud. “An’ it’s 
been har-rd on ye, Mr. Fulton, eh. Ye’ve not been the fool, 
me dear,” she further said after a minute. “It’s that ye been 
sent out in the wor-rld without the lesson of how to take ut. 
An’ it’s a bad wor-rld, be-lieve me,” Miss McGee said. “It’s 
not the place for innocent young bo’oys the loike of you to be 
wanderin’ around alone.” 

She turned her eyes from the unconsidered ruins outside 
the window to Robert, sitting opposite to her in the best poor 
chair she had to give him; she looked at him sitting there, 
so neat, so well-brushed. . . . 

And suddenly the feeling in her changed. She felt not 
only old, but old to him. She felt as if she might be the 
mother he had never known. With the sensation of something 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


301 

breaking in her she stretched across to him and took his 
hands in hers and held them. She had never done this before; 
she had always held back from touching him. “Me dear, me 
dear,” she said, “ ’tis the har-rd toime ye’ve had. Ef I could 
help ye to bear ut an’ mend ut, I — I’d ...” 

She stopped, and her hands tightened their clasp on his. 

“I’d die,” she said. “Ye know that.” And then, loosening 
her clasp on his hands and letting them go and straightening 
herself up in her old chair again, she added in quite a common- 
place tone, “Ye must never forgit, Mr. Fulton, eh, ye’ve the 
old friend in Katie McGee. The old friend,” she said. 
“Tur’rn to her, me dear, in any trouble. She’s the friend. 
She’s the friend a’alroight.” 

She got up and began to fidget about the room. She felt 
tired, drooping, as if the something that had broken in her 
were essential to hold her up. 

“An’ cheer up,” she said. “I guess the worst’s pa’ast an’ 
gawn. When the Lady comes back she’ll help ye the way I 
can’t. She’ll foind ye work, depend. Take ut from me, she’ll 
not forgit.” 

Miss McGee paused in her fidgeting about the room. 

“I’ll not let her,” she said fiercely. 

And as Robert sat looking out of the window at the dead 
heaps of brick on the other side of the way, a little glimmer 
of hope stole into his heart. It stole there because of the 
certainties in Miss McGee’s voice. She infected him with hope. 
He thought perhaps that the Lady might help him. Just help 
him to help himself — with a hand, how he would clamber up — 
now! How he would work! 

He turned to Miss McGee with a happy smile. 

“You’re good to me,” he said, as he had said it before, 
but with emphasis and energy this time. “You’re good to me. 
I don’t know what I should have done without you here.” 
For the first time, perhaps, he felt truly affectionate. Miss 
McGee noted his tense. 


CHAPTER XLI 

D URING this communicative mood of Robert’s — which was 
interspersed with evenings when he would absolutely re- 
tire into the fastnesses of his former silence — he hadn’t 
the smallest inclination to work at the Canada Book. Robert 


302 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


Fulton wasn’t one of the workers of the world. If he had 
been left alone and life had dealt peaceably with him, he 
would have waded gently through life, not idle exactly, but 
indolently meditative. He did not feel any impulse to do things. 
He had not a trace of that restlessness that spurs the born 
workers into work — whether they wish it or not; he had never, 
before coming to Canada, felt the, often unhappy, itch that 
stimulates men, and sometimes but far less often women, to 
produce. Robert Fulton would have been well content to have 
been, as he often had wished he might have been, a quiet 

monk of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, happily settled in 

his monastery, a digger in the earth there, a peaceful cultivator 
of herbs or fruits or flowers; possibly the illuminator of a 
script ; never a St. Augustine, a great sinner and a great repenter, 
one of those who, for the relief of his own mind and body, 
must be doing — either right or wrong. Robert was one of 

those calmer souls who are content to be. Willingly would be 

have passed his days noting, but only mentally — that is suffi- 
cient for the contemplative souls — the things of this world as 
they went by him: for his active pursuits he might have made 
a small accurate drawing, of a tree-branch, perhaps, or he 
might have made a study of a flower. Or he might merely 
have stayed observing the world with the receptive mind 
that was contented to be where God had placed it. 

He had no chance of developing this type of being. Robert 
Fulton was one of the many people of our day who are 
being hurried more rapidly than was good for him — as he 
himself in his Canada Book declared the immigrants to have 
been — into a further stage of evolution. The experiment the 
mpdern world (in conjunction with his own folly) was trying 
on Robert Fulton was undue poverty and a long grind of un- 
congenial toil. These chemical agents were naturally produc- 
ing on him some reaction; and the reaction they were produc- 
ing was the driving of him to express in some way or other 
the definite discontent he felt. 

It was the Arwndel Market really that was responsible for 
the Canada Book. Had Robert not served at his Dairy Counter 
and suffered the misery he did there, it would have been long 
before he would have put pen to paper, to try to make ar- 
ticulate what he felt. For that was what the Canada Book 
was doing — really. It set out to be a book about the manual 
workers, but what it really was was a book about Robert Fulton, 
salesman at the Dairy Counter. He had been made so su- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


303 


premely miserable by being planted in ground where he could 
not possibly grow — or he had made himself so supremely miser- 
able by allowing himself to be planted there — that the itch 
to express himself had been artificially developed. He had 
begun to feel that desire to work, that desire to explain him- 
self to himself and the world to everyone else that is so char- 
acteristic of our time. He felt unhappy. His unhappiness urged 
him to an introspection which was foreign to his nature. The 
peaceful monk of the fifteenth century retired one day further 
back into an impossible past as the Robert Fulton of the 
twentieth century each day unwillingly made his way to 
Stempel Street — where the Arundel Market was. If fate had 
kept Robert Fulton indefinitely at the Arundel Market the 
monk of the wholly impossible past would in time have be- 
come utterly impossible to find in a wholly discontented Robert 
Fulton of an actual present. The peaceful cultivator of herb 
or flower would slowly but relentlessly be turned into the rest- 
less writer of unhappy books. 

Robert could not have put these things to himself in so 
many words. He was not definitely conscious that the Canada 
Book was his indictment of the modern world. But, had he 
had the chance of one or two intimate conversations with 
Eileen Martyn, it would not have taken him very long to 
have reached the point of consciousness. He half-knew that 
his little booklet was his apologia for life. He semi-recognized 
that his thesis was not nearly so much a treatise on Canada 
and her immigrants as a questioning of himself. And pos- 
sibly it was the semi-consciousness of this that kept him back 
from writing more of it. What Miss Martyn had suggested was 
not this. She had suggested that he might write “something 
about Canada”: that he might “present” an impersonal Canada 
to the world at large. He knew well enough he was not doing 
that. More: he had a very shrewd suspicion that he never 
would be able to do that. Miss Martyn had said Canada 
was a virile subject. Well, was he competent to handle virile 
subjects? 

He slid along through the July days that were not so hot as 
he had feared they would be. Robert, like Miss McGee — 
far more than Miss McGee — was in the habit of dying a 
thousand deaths before there was any talk of dying one. The 
July of 1918 was pleasant. He could go on living in it f 
and even more bearably than usual; for the smart clientele 
of the Arundel Market was out of the city on its summer holi- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


304 

day, so that the Arnwdel salesmen could stop and linger and 
chat to one another, count the hours till lunch-time out loud, 
calculate (with very light-weight bets, perhaps) who would 
get out of the store first when the time should come to close 
down for the night. At six or a little after it (for the 
Directors of the Market had decided to close an hour earlier 
during the months of July and August) and on Saturdays 
at five, Robert was free to go back to Penelope’s Buildings 
and have the evening to himself. Penelope’s Buildings was 
close and dingy and smelly, more unbearable in the summer 
than in the winter months; and, very often, after their meal, 
Robert and Miss McGee would leave the Buildings and go 
on the hill above Regalia, and, amongst its great shadowy 
trees, and along its thick bushy paths, they would wander and 
wander, and imagine themselves far from the city. There were 
lovely views to be had. From one spot, above an old disused 
quarry, it was possible to look far across the mighty St. Law- 
rence flowing calmly past Regalia’s fussy busy-ness, and to 
look over to the Green Mountains rising majestically beyond the 
opposite bank. Sitting there looking out into the calm distance, 
Miss McGee would sometimes begin and tell of the mountains 
in Ireland that Mrs. McGee had loved to talk about: “Moun- 
tains, the loike of which isn’t here, sure thing, blue and quoiet 
an’ misty, an’ full of the loveliness that’s not of this wor-rld. 
D’ye know the feelin’, eh, a mountain gives ye?” Miss McGee 
would go on. “I’ve seen me with me hear-rt in me throat 
for the great beauty of ut. The way the hill would look 
would take me acrost the eternal river and roight in the 
eternal city there. D’ye think, Mr. Fulton, eh,” she said once, 
“it’s us two’ll be meetin’? Is there one place fer you and 
another fer me that thinks different on these things, or will 
we be meetin’, an’ no more misunderstanding nor nothin’ 
no more . . . ?” 

After a second she would add to this sort of remark, “There’s 
no misunderstanding here betwixt you an’ me, God help us, 
but there’ll be less there. We’ll be understand^’ everythin’ 
there p’raps.” 

Miss McGee would take their supper up sometimes with 
them in a little basket. Robert would find her on his return 
from the Market with her hat on and the basket in her hand. 
“Sure,” she would say, “it’s the grand foine noight. I was 
thinkin’ in meself we moight lie up there on the gra-ass, eh, 
an’ eat our suppers. I’ve a sup of tea in me bottle here an’ I 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


305 

got sangwitches made, an’ we can git a peach at the corner 
fruit-store there the toime we’re passin’ ut.” 

Those little meals were a pleasure to Robert. He liked things 
out in the open air; to get away from Penelope’s Buildings was 
in itself a treat. He would lie on the burned-up grass and 
gaze up into the soft evening sky with lazy, non-seeing eyes. 
And Miss McGee, seated by his side, with her feet tucked under 
her, would hand him out sangwitches and a piece of cake per- 
haps, a mug of tea: and she would love to peel the peaches he 
was so fond of and carefully hand him the peeled fruit on 
the end of the knife. “Here,” she would say. “Hurry there. 
Git busy, eh. Be sure ye let no drip fall on yer clothes the 
way ye’re lyin’. The fruit’s juicy, be-lieve me.” And then, 
with that playful way women have of finding fault with the 
men they care for, she would add, “The way to be lyin’ 
there an’ you eatin’I Why will ye not be settin’ up an’ eatin’ 
yer meal the way I’m eatin’ moine. Ye’ll dir-rty yerself 
lyin’ there on the ground, an’ the sun gittin’ in yer eyes. . . .” 

“Don’t bother me, Miss McGee,” Robert would answer. 
“I’m happy.” 

“Are ye now?” Miss McGee, would say. “Are ye now, me 
dear? That’s good hearin’. Take my word, if it’s happy 
ye are, it’s happy I am meself. Take yer rest the way ye feel 
loike ut, an’ I’ll pare yer fruit fer ye.” 

Those evenings up on Regalia hill were happier things than 
Miss McGee ever expected to enjoy again. She, too, was 
quite happy — at moments. Sitting up on the hill with the 
sun going down, as it were in a special grand spectacular stunt 
for Robert and herself (Regalia’s hill was big enough to give 
you the feeling of utter loneliness upon it), she was happy. She 
loved to watch Robert stretched at her feet. She loved it 
when he was moved to say something — the communicative 
mood still went on taking him by fits and starts. “Did ye!” 
she would say: and then, with an ever undiminished en- 
thusiasm and interest, “Sure, tell us some more, eh, Mr. 
Fulton, dear.” 

Apart from these evenings Miss McGee was not having 
any too good a time of it. Her customers were all away for 
their summer holiday, and she was therefore “laid off” 
from her work. Usually in past summers, she had taken 
some odd job for the two or three midsummer months. She 
had put an “ad” in the papers, and she had gone to the 
Office of the Daily Planet and seen what the “ad” had brought 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


306 

forth. There had been a distinct pleasure in opening those 
notes addressed to “1043 2 A” or something of that kind; as 
she took out the note from its envelope she had always had 
a feeling that here perhaps was the really unexpected some- 
thing. It never had been. Still, one summer she had got the 
job of upholstress at a small hotel — running up fresh curtains 
on the machine and renewing the covers on the hotel chairs: 
and that had been rather fun. The meals had been “foine.” 
Several times she had gone to the country to redd up country 
family wardrobes too — and sometimes that had been rather nice. 
There had always been the greediness of the country families 
to combat; they, different as they might be in other things, 
had all been alike in wanting the utmost cent’s worth out of 
their money. But Miss McGee was a doughty warrior. No 
family, country or town, could get out of her what she didn’t 
want to give. She had wheedled, blandhandhered, stood up 
for her rights, flatly said she wouldn’t as had seemed most 
suitable to her: and by the end of the time, glad as she had 
usually been to come away, she had at least had country air, 
a difference in meals, a difference in the humanity she looked 
at. Miss McGee liked her fellow-mortals. It would have been 
difficult to her to do without them. She would indeed have 
chosen disagreeable mortals rather than none at all — an incom- 
prehensible point of view to Robert: and she was so rootedly 
city-bred too that her heart always gave a bound in her when 
she saw the unkempt side-walks and the flashing electric lights 
of Regalia city once more. She didn’t really like country life. 
It was “noice” but it was dull. After a bit the cows got on 
her nerves and she began to wish the trees would talk. It was 
on the whole a comfort to get back to the Buildings and have 
a row with Mrs. Savourin. This summer she made no effort 
to get a job. One reason perhaps was that the summer before 
she had had charge of a child — an only one — and that had been 
a punk job and she had sworn she never would have such 
another. Miss McGee was not the essentially motherly type. 
She liked “kids,” provided they were always good and were gen- 
erally little girls and wore nice starched clothing which they 
never crushed. She certainly didn’t like children in the way her 
own mother had liked them. However, she did her duty by 
children; this spoiled child she had taken in hand — she had 
lectured it and made it say its prayers, and sometimes, when 
it was in its nightgown and sleepy and quiet, she had taken 
it in her arms and crooned to it and felt very fond of it. But 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


307 

she had also been glad to say good-by to it. f ‘Regalia 
fer moine!” she had remarked in putting her foot down on 
the platform as she got off the train after that holiday. And, 
this year, there was another reason to “stay put” as she said; 
she didn’t wish to leave Robert. Who knew! This might be 
her last, as it was her first, summer alone with him. Perhaps 
in a year from now . . . ! Miss McGee always closed up her 
reflections at this point. She made occupations for herself. She 
strolled along St. Hubert’s Boulevard and looked into the win- 
dows of the big stores there, and whenever she saw a “mawdel” 
that took her fancy she strolled into the shop and asked the 
young lady in the “Suit Department” if she could “try that 
there mawdel in the window on.” It never did, of course. 
And the young lady had a shrewd idea it wouldn’t be likely 
to do before she ever got it out of the window. But it was 
her business to please customers — she got it out: and Katie 
McGee posed with it on in front of the triple-mirrors, turned 
and twisted, walked a step here and a step there — took off 
the pattern of it in her mind (this was the way she got her 
patterns mostly) and then said she guessed it was too long — 
or too short — or the waist didn’t “set,” or she didn’t fancy 
the “loines.” It always ended in her taking the “mawdel” off 
and in the young lady putting it back in the window. Miss 
McGee enjoyed herself thus, it passed the time: she would 
spend hours in this way, strolling along the hot side-walks 
with her head turned sideways towards the things inside the 
stores. 

She did keep her eyes on the “ads” too. She borrowed the 
Evening News from Mrs. Savourin who inherited it from “the 
thug” who occupied Mrs. Morphy’s old home: and she pored 
over the “ads” in its columns hour after hour. Once she saw 
that at the Fornaro Hotel they wanted a “linen-girl,” and 
she went to apply for the post. She didn’t want a “sleep-in 
job,” and this linen-girl’s job was not a sleep-in one. The 
pay was good. She felt anxious to get it. However, when 
she had been interviewed by various people, getting less and 
less smart in the ratio of distance they showed to the front 
door, she found she “wouldn’t do.” “Guess you have to wear 
gla’asses, eh?” the housekeeper on the top floor said mean- 
ingly. Miss McGee came down the stairs of the Fornaro Hotel 
feeling ten years’ older than when she went up. Nothing makes 
us so old as others branding us with age. 

Another time she saw that at the big Women’s College of 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


308 

Regalia they wanted an “odd girl.” She thought she might 
pass as a “girl,” — a “business” one, and she went to the big 
gray building and rang at the bell there. She thought as she 
stood on the broad door-step outside the college door that 
she would like to get some employment inside. She would 
then see what an education was like if she x could not actually 
share in it. However, there too her age was the barrier. “I 
want a girl,” the housekeeper said with emphasis. Not even 
in the business sense did Miss McGee answer to that description 
any longer, evidently. “Guess Mickey was roight,” Miss McGee 
said to herself descending the ample stairway of the College. 
“Guess he knew the toime o’ day, eh!” Her bitterness against 
Mickey began to subside. After all, he had been quite right. 
He had known. 

It seemed to her cruel that the dire age of forty-seven should 
so effectually bar her out from usefulness. “I ain’t old,” 
she would say to herself occasionally, with a faint flicker of 
resentment against unmerited misfortune. “I ain't old. I’d 
fix ’em — ef they’d take me.” Yet the fact remained — and she 
knew it — that needles wouldn’t thread as they used to do. And 
sometimes, too, she was conscious that her stitches seemed 
coarser, that her finishing was less immaculate. Also, as she 
trailed about the streets gazing at “mawdels” and preparing 
her mind thus for its winter’s work, it struck her that life 
seemed more of a responsibility than it had once done. She 
was losing her youthful sense that “things’ll come a’al- 
roight, God help me. . . .” She was beginning to feel the 
load. 

Apart from these two trials Miss McGee made no effort 
to find work. She felt that, rather than face more employers 
of labor — more housekeepers of hotels and colleges — she would 
rather go short of “mooney.” Robert, when he saw that she 
was not occupied, wanted her to come and lunch with him 
every day at the Great North-Eastern. “Do come,” he said, 
quite eagerly for him. “It will be such fun to find a friend.” 
But, except for one special occasion when Miss McGee con- 
sented to meet him at the Lunch Counter (it was in order 
to see the little waitress he had sometimes told her about) 
she never would go. “No,” she said, ‘no, Mr. Fulton, dear. I 
ain’t never begged yet, nor I ain’t cadged. I got Uncle’s 
mooney. I’ll fix meself a’alroight, don’t worry.” 

And Robert had to take it so. 

Once or twice she got a stray day’s work. One of her 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


309 

regular customers would be “passing through,” and she would 
write a post-card to “McGee” to come. And then Katie, only 
too glad, would go and spend a couple of days perhaps, 
pressing out the customer’s suits, sewing buttons on where they 
had come off, renewing soiled “vestees,” putting the wardrobe 
in order for its further travels. That made an extra three 
dollars or so; and Mrs. Barclay, down at some “summer hotel” 
with her Katie, would send up a, parcel now and then with 
country produce in it — eggs, butter, a fowl, home-made candies 
that some enterprising lady was making in the village. When- 
ever one of these parcels came Katie McGee and Robert would 
have a special pic-nic up on Regalia hill. They would sit 
on the grass with their eyes on the beautiful world as they 
ate and drank, sharing the crumbs of their feast with some 
friendly chipmunk, who, chipping and chattering, would come 
sidling off his native bough and up to them for charity and 
kindness. “The sweethear’rt,” Miss McGee would say, hold- 
ing out her hand with something tasty in it. “Come, sweet- 
hear’rt, come.” She loved animals in a sort of passionate 
way. “Did ever ye saw the beat of that!” she would cry, when 
the chipmunk, daring and yet frightened, would slip up to her 
and consent to take the tit-bit out of her fingers. “My, ain’t 
he the cute little article, eh? Ain’t he the kid, Mr. Fulton?” 
If it had been a chipmunk that she had had to spend her 
previous summer with, she would have been happy enough. She 
loved animals far more than children. It was at such mo- 
ments as these — but only at such moments now — that her 
oldness fell away from her. With the chipmunk’s advent her 
preoccupations would quite suddenly lpe as if they were not. 
When it came time to go home together after such an episode, 
she would walk at Robert’s side with a light springy step, her 
head held high, her eyes shining in the soft summer night. 
“Ain’t the sky great?” she would say. “Ain’t the loines of 
ut grand? I guess,” she said once, turning mischievously to 
Robert, “ye ain’t got the sky loike that in England, eh?” she 
laughed. “Takes Ireland to be the beat of that. Canada’s It, 
ain’t ut, Mr. Fulton . . . ?” 

And at that speech the memory of the Lady would slip 
across both of them, and the deep night-blue of the sky would 
cease to be beautiful for Katie McGee. “Don’t forgit yer book, 
eh,” she would go on in a much graver voice with that casual 
linking on of one subject' with another that is so essentially 
feminine. “Ye got to have that wrote the toime she comes back, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


310 

don’t ye forgit ut. Ye’d best git in an’ fix yerself some, I 
guess.” 

And, after such a reminder, they would go the rest of the 
way with hardly a word between them, and they would part 
at the door of Miss McGee’s flat, as they had parted now 
so many times, and Robert would go up-stairs thinking to 
himself, “I’m no good. Why don’t I work? Do something?” 
And he would lie half the night through meeting the Lady’s 
direct glance with his wide-open sleepless eyes. “I wonder 
where she is now!” he would say to himself. She seemed infi- 
nitely distant — from Penelope’s Buildings. There were times 
when that visit to her seemed little better than a dream. 


CHAPTER XLII 

W HEN the first real heat of the summer came in the late 
days of August it burst upon what remained of Robert’s 
philosophy and broke it to pieces. Robert Fulton cer- 
tainly was an unsatisfactory creature. He could stand no 
intensities of any kind — neither heat nor cold, nor extremes of 
poverty — nor would he have stood extremes of riches any better. 
He didn’t like passionate feelings; he wasn’t an extremist in 
any way. When the sun shone down on Regalia with a fierce- 
ness and intensity it hadn’t shown for years, Robert merely 
said to himself, “Of course,” and went his way as usual. It 
wasn’t a matter to grumble about: he simply bore it. 

Also, something helped him to bear the intensity of the 
sunshine and all other things too. After he had said “Of 
course,” something else passed through his mind. It’s nearly 
autumn now, was what he said, “and autumn is cool, and 
besides, in autumn . . .” — and there his meditations ended. 
But, as he said these things to himself, his eyes seemed to meet 
something they met very readily. Again the direct glance of 
Eileen Martyn seemed to be before his eyes, and he met it 
timidly, with his own much less direct one. “She’ll be back,” 
he sometimes got the length of saying, “soon.” And the 
Arwwdel Market seemed less — what it was. 

It was Miss McGee who really stood the heat-wave badly. 
She had no electric fans in Penelope’s Buildings as Robert 
had at his Dairy Counter. He stood in the full blast of a fan; 
and now, instead of his eyes being glued to the clock (as in 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3ii 

the absence of customers, they were in the winter) they were 
turned to the streamers of many-colored ribbon that were tied 
to the metal spokes of the revolving fan: thus he would stand, 
watching, until the varied colors of the ribbons would become 
blended in his consciousness into one rainbow shade — and the 
shreds of his consciousness too, would, like the many-colored 
streamers, seem to be merged into one. There, behind his 
counter, his blue eyes fixed, he would fall at last into an al- 
most hypnotic state: and the voice of some stray woman asking 
for “a ha’alf a pound of sweet butter, eh,” would startle him 
as if it were the last trump. He would tear his eyes from the 
fan with the sort of effort it takes to rouse oneself from a 
deep dream; his consciousness would detach itself into shreds 
once more, each shred catching on to some separate effect of 
this world, and he would leap into action. “Yes, Madam. 
Anything more?” He would wrap the butter up into a neat 
parcel, take the money from the customer’s hand, wrap it up 
with the bill, stuff the wrapped-up parcel into the little metal 
box, set it on its rail, touch the button — and with a swish of 
motion up-hill it would go running to the young lady in her 
cage. It was always the same old story. “Your change, 
Madam.” There was lots of time to be polite now. He would 
count the change into the hands of the customer — molto andante 
— “Good morning, Madam.” And once more he would fix his 
eyes on the streamers of ribbon, once more melt into the 
hypnotic state, and become as unconscious of the world around 
him as if he were an Indian gnani. 

This passed the time for Robert. At the Lunch Counter 
there was another electric fan; and, in the draught of it he 
could sit, either gazing dreamily into St. Hubert’s Boulevard — 
very hot, very dry, very deserted now: or he could draw the 
inevitable book from his pocket and desultorily read a sentence 
here and there. There were mitigations for Robert in the heat- 
wave of August. 

But Katie McGee stayed home, as she said. During the 
intense heat she felt as if she couldn’t face the trying-on of 
mawdels, or the glare of the Boulevard at all. She stayed in 
Penelope’s Buildings, and sewed. First she renewed the collar 
on Uncle’s coat: and in this there was pleasure. She got it 
out from where she had it carefully put away “from the mawth,” 
and she shook it and let it air in the sun. Then she brushed 
it, and, having reverently unpicked Uncle’s collar, she cut a 
new one from a piece of velvet she had brought home a long 


312 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


while before from Mrs. Glassridge’s (Miss McGee often brought 
home “pickings” as she called them from her customers’) and 
very carefully sewed it on. The re-collared coat was the one 
pleasant fact she had to allow her mind to dwell on. “I’ll 
put ut away from the mawth again now,” she said to herself, 
stitching away, “an’ in the winter, God bless um, I’ll give ut 
um, an’ it’ll keep the cold awf of um sure.” The coat, held 
up at arm’s length, fulfilled itself entirely. The eight years 
since Uncle Mike Cassidy’s death seemed but a day in the 
eyes of Miss McGee as she surveyed this wonderful garment. 
“I guess,” she said to herself, making the same remark she 
had made to herself on a previous occasion, “when a coat is 
cut swa’all, it is” And in her mind’s eye she saw Robert 
setting off from Penelope’s Buildings looking like the gen’leman 
bor’rn he was with the coat on his back — and she felt happy. 

Otherwise she sat and stitched at Ag’s trousseau. After Mrs. 
Garry and Ag had come a good many times, this possibility 
had been hinted at; and after it had been hinted at a good 
many times, the hint passed into a supplication, and the sup- 
plication into a demand. Miss McGee was willing enough. 
She said to herself, “I moighter knowed, eh, Mary had su’then 
up her sleeve!” Mary Garry always had had that “having” 
instinct that wanted everything in sight: and she had that 
stupidity— or rather, perhaps, that obtuseness that often goes 
with such a disposition. “I moighter knowed ut, eh,” Katie 
said to herself. “A’alroight,” was what she said out loud, 
“I’ll fix Ag ef you want ut so them Furlongs don’t need 
to feel badly they married a McGee.” Miss McGee regarded 
her sister’s family as McGees. One of her abiding regrets 
was that Mary had had no boy whom she could have named 
McGee Garry, and so, in a sense, carried on the family. 
“Sure, gir’rls is a’alroight,” she had remarked in the old 
years when Mary insistently brought forth only the female 
sex, “but, God save us, ain’t there enough!” She would have 
liked a boy. She would have felt a great pride in a McGee, 
even though his last name had been Garry. It was not to be, 
and she was resigned to doing the best she could for the girl 
of her family who was going into a strange family, there to 
bring forth in a year or so something that still had the McGee 
blood in its veins — the McGee blood that was slowly drying 
up into nothingness. 

“Sure, ain’t ut the pity Ag ain’t got some stoyle,” Ag’s Aunt 
thought, stitching and cutting and fitting Ag every day or so. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


313 

“My wor’rd, she ain’t got the look her grandma’a had!” And 
she thought with sadness of Tim Garry and Tim Garry’s sister, 
Auntie Nellie (whom Nellie the school-teacher had been named 
for). “My Gawd,” she thought, “ ’tis some hog’s hole back in 
Ireland there they’ll be cornin’ from.” She had always liked 
Tim Garry — in a way: but she always disapproved of him 
too. He had no ancestor back before the time of our Lord. 
Tim was a modern proposition, and it showed in him, and 
in his sister Nellie too. They looked as if God had got tired 
of making human beings and hadn’t had energy to finish these 
properly. The Garrys had thick hands and short finger-nails, 
stumpy feet, they were thick in the body — their faces were 
large. Ag was a Garry through and through : and as her Aunt 
“fixed” underwear and crepe-de-chine kimonos and little dress- 
ing jackets and dainty blouses and stylish underskirts, she often 
thought to herself, “Sure ’tis the clothes Ed Furlong’ll be 
marryin’, eh. ’Tis them that’s wor’rth whoile.” She slightly 
resented the fact that Ed Furlong had never been brought to 
be introduced to her, but that made no difference in her 
desire that Ag should enter the Furlong family “good.” “Ye’ll 
git yer tailored suit the place I’ll show ye,” she said to Ag (she 
had Mrs. Glassridge’s tailor in her mind). “I’ll not make yer 
tailored suit fer ye — no fear. Ye’ll go where I say, an’ 
Auntie’s cornin’ with ye too to choose an’ see ye fitted.” “She’ll 
not save her mooney that way,” she said to herself. “She’ll 
look good in her suit the way a man kin make ut.” And she 
carried her point and took Ag and Mrs. Garry to the tailor’s 
(they were rather surprised to see the esteem in which the 
tailor evidently held Auntie Katie) and chose a dark, plain, 
well-cut suit for Ag — the reverse of what Ag and her mother 
would have chosen for themselves: and Ag looked “dacent,” 
as her Aunt said. “Be God,” she however also said to herself, 
“ ’tis the dickuns to be fat an’ all, eh. ‘Kape thin!’ was what 
Uncle Mike’d used to say — he knowed the toime o’ day!” 

These things passed the time. Without Ag’s wedding-clothes 
this August Auntie sometimes felt she would have gone under. 
They interested her. Though she would have liked it much 
better if they had been Rose’s wedding-clothes — or Nellie’s — 
that would have been worth while! — still Ag’s were better 
than nothing. She did her best. As she sat sewing, however, 
things seemed to “come over her,” as she said. It hadn’t been 
a good year. This year of 1918 had brought it home to her 
that she was an old woman and that nobody and nothing 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3H 

cared for her any more. As she sewed Ag’s clothes, she quite 
consciously chose out the needles with the large eyes to sew 
with. The world would have none of a woman who did that: 
the world wanted brisk young active creatures with good sight 
and good hearing so that they could do its behests quickly and 
well. She also cared very much for a young man she had 
quite voluntarily handed over to a young woman. Friends 
were no good — Mickey Ryan had chucked her over. She felt, 
stitching away, as if the world had rather ruthlessly chucked 
her about, and that in the chucking process she had got rather 
badly dinted. “Oh my,” she said over and over again to her- 
self, “don’t matter any. I ain’t neither better nor worse than 
the rest. I’m jes’ wore out. But say,” she would add to herself 
after a minute, “ain’t ut some wor’rld, eh?” She felt — tired. 

She could of course 'have gone to stay at Garryton. It would 
have been far more convenient for the Garrys to have had her 
sewing there, instead of Ag having to trail constantly in and 
out to Penelope’s Buildings to be fitted. But Miss McGee 
would not go to Garryton. Possibly she felt in herself a sort 
of suspicion that they wanted her so badly to come because it 
would be more convenient to have her there. Perhaps the 
cold turkey was not quite digested even yet. Certainly Aunt 
Nellie Garry’s being in the Garry home as a permanency 
had something to do with it. And besides . . . Katie McGee 
saw herself now quite clearly for what she was — not for what 
she had thought she was on the night of Mary Garry coming to 
“make it up.” She was just a poor little old soul with no 
chance of bettering herself as long as she might live. She had 
rolled to pretty near the bottom of the hill — and she would 
stay there. No, she would not go to Garryton to be patronized 
and petted, and for Aunt Nellie to point out kindly to her how 
old she had grown and what beautiful hair she had once 
had in the days long long ago. She wouldn’t. It was no 
use for Mary to keep saying, “Come on, Kate. The gir’rls is 

just woild to have Auntie come an’ stay ” It was no 

use. She wouldn’t go. She could still bestow something on 
the Garry family — her taste. She would make Ag’s clothes. 
She would slave all summer through. She would give all 
that was left to her to give with both hands — generously: but 
she would not receive. 

How well she remembered Auntie Nellie casting sheeps’ eyes 
at Mitt. Auntie Nellie! — that thing that God had evidently 
made in a desperate hurry and thrown into the world. Miss 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


315 

McGee, in the oldest days of all, had never been able to bear 
her: and she had wanted Mitt. And after Mitt had thrown 
Katie McGee over, she had wanted to be “kind.” Miss McGee 
was quite polite in the way she rejected Mary Garry’s, invita- 
tions. She merely said she guessed she loiked stayin’ home 
best. She was gittin’ old — she loiked her own bed. She 
guessed she’d come some other toime when she felt more loike 
ut. She could sew better at home. . . . 

But it was dull, and she was bored. There was nothing to 
do — but sew. It was all very well to adjust her glasses care- 
fully on her nose so that she might make no false stitch 
and so imperil the honor of the McGees in the Furlong family: 
but — it was dull. There was no one now she could run in 
and pass the time of day with. Poor Mrs. Morphy’s leg was 
no longer there to dress. She couldn’t even run up to Miss 
Healy’s and insist on her coming down to drink the cup of 
tea. Things had come to a bad pass when she was missing 
Cassie Healy, God help her! And them gir’rls opp’site. She 
heard things in the night she should not have heard. She 
turned and twisted and tried not to hear. But she heard. It 
began to seem not worth while even to prepare “lunches” that 
she and Robert might eat up on the hill. “Guess ut’s too 
hot, eh,” she would say in a languid voice to Robert when he 
came home: and he and she would pass the evenings by her 
open window, surveying the dispiriting prospect across the 
street, and sometimes even listening to the clang of the work- 
men’s hammers on the metal girders when they were working 
overtime at “The Trefusian Mansions” as the big Apartment 
House opposite was to be called. “We’ll have to quit, eh,” 
Miss McGee would say, gazing out of the window. “Guess 
you an’ me’d do some better in them Trefusian Mansions there, 
eh.” And through her mind would flit the query, “What for?” 
It seemed to size up life. 

Under these depressing conditions it seemed nothing less 
than a heaven-sent inspiration that dispatched Robert home one 
night with an energy quite unusual in him. “Come along, 
Miss McGee,” he said. “Let’s go down to Summer Park. It’s 
cooler down there — I heard two customers talking about it. 
Get your hat on and come.” With that queer quick change 
of front that was first nature to Miss McGee, she suddenly felt 
this world was worth living in — that it was a good place — 
that people were kind — that Robert was fond of her. . . . 

It didn’t take a second for her to say, “I’ll come, Mr. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3i6 

Fulton — be sure!” — with the languor all gone out of her voice: 
and not ten minutes more for her to slip into her best little 
black-and-white summer frock and her “good” hat — her “good” 
smile was there anyway. It seemed a bad dream that she had 
been spending the summer sewing clothes for Ag and thinking 
the world a nightmare: by the time they were seated side by 
side in the car, on the wicker crossway seat that only held two, 
Robert close by her, and the kind world just outside the window, 
Katie McGee was out of this life altogether and into a dream- 
life of her own. “Oh my,” she thought, with all her old 
vitality, “say, ain’t ut good, eh, to git out! ’Tain’t roight to 
be settin’ there all the toime alone. ’Tis foine ut is out here.” 
And she put all bad things far away behind her and set out to 
enjoy herself. 


CHAPTER XLIII 

O N the long ride down to Summer Park they didn’t say 
much. They were tired, both of them, and Robert was 
faint for want of food. It had been so hot in the 
middle of the day that he had eaten nothing at his North- 
Eastern Counter; he had simply drunk down a cup of coffee, 
hoping it would pour some stimulant into him: and then he 
had sat, until inexorable time, galloping along, had sent 
him back to his Market. He was glad Miss McGee didn’t 
seem to want to talk. In fact, he felt so weary and done 
that he was almost sorry at moments he had ever heard the 
two customers at his Dairy Counter exchanging their impres- 
sions of the place he was bound for. 

“Fine, eh?” 

“I should say!” 

“That music down there at the Summer Park is one fine 
thing, you bet.” 

“I guess ’tis, eh!” 

“An’ say, my dear, take ut from me, that What’s-us-name, 
Facciatore there, beats the band. . . 

“Oh, Gee . . . !” 

So the two had passed out of hearing, continuing to exchange 
what they took for their impressions of Summer Park. It had 
all been very banal and silly and Robert was in no smiling 
mood; and yet, without rhyme or reason, just because he hadn’t 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


317 

been able to help listening to this idiotic conversation, there 
had dashed into his mind the idea, “Why shouldn’t we go 
down there to-night? It would be cooler, anyway!” 

He had felt what Miss McGee called all braced up by the 
idea. He had come home with a most unusual speed, and he 
had knocked at Miss McGee’s door with an extraordinarily 
eager hand. “Come along,” he had said with quite an irre- 
sistible impetus, “get your hat on. We’ll go down to Summer 
Park and have an evening there. I’ll just run up-stairs — I 
shan’t be a minute. . . He had felt eager to have any sort 
of a treat — a change from the daily darg — a breath of the 
river air. And now, as he leaned back on his wicker seat, it 
struck him that he would have done quite } as well — better 
perhaps — to stay at home and contemplate the prospects of the 
Trefusian Mansions on the ruins of Semple’s drug-store out 
of Miss McGee’s Drayton Place window. 

Miss McGee, on her side, was silent principally because she 
was so happy. She felt the touch of Robert’s coat-sleeve on 
her thin summer gown. She loved the feeling of his per- 
sonality, there, so close as almost to be a part of her own. She 
was unwilling to break in on this happiness of hers with speech 
— in case she should shatter it. So she sat, close-pressed to 
Robert’s side, unaware of the reluctance to be where he was 
that was slowly taking shape in him: entirely and absolutely 
happy. 

The car sped very rapidly through the evening air. The in- 
tense burning heat of the day was letting up. The windows 
of the car were down to their uttermost so that a rush of air 
went through and through the car, bringing with it a sense 
of refreshment and renewing life. Men took their hats off 
and let the breeze play on their close-cropped heads; women 
leaned back, their ungloved hands in their laps, careless of the 
way the draught might disorder their 'carefully-waved hair. 
It was cool and delicious, and the folks sat, as Miss McGee 
said to herself, “drinkin’ ut in.” She herself sat close to 
the open window and looked out at it. Their way to the Summer 
Park lay East, through the French-Canadian part of Regalia, 
that looked, for all the world, as if it were a Parisian suburb. 
There were the French names above the stores — Bourgeau, St. 
Aubin, Darettes; there were pleasant capable stout women 
going home with half yards of bread sticking out of their 
baskets: there was the look, the air, above all, the smell of 
the French suburb or the small provincial French town. Further 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3i8 

on, there were Jewish names above the doors, and Miss McGee 
glanced with an unfamiliar feeling at the dark bearded men 
and stout olive-skinned women with their greasy abundant hair, 
talking to one another in unknown tongues and gesticulating 
with almost as unexpected gestures. Robert too, looked out 
of the window across Miss McGee, and it came over him, as he 
looked, what a cosmopolitan city, after all, he and Miss McGee 
lived in. Inside Penelope’s Buildings with the Irish and 
Scotch tongues round about them, Regalia seemed a small 
parochial sort of place, formed of just as parochial places 
brought across the sea: but here, in the Eastern part of 
Regalia there was nothing parochial at any rate. There was 
a good deal of dirt and a good deal of unexpectedness, but 
there was something that was far bigger than just little Great 
Britain across the sea to watch. As the car went speeding 
through St. Hubert’s Boulevard that went in one long straight 
line right down to the waterway, a long procession formed 
before the eyes of Robert and Katie McGee. There were the 
Jews of Eastern Europe upset pell-mell across the Atlantic 
Ocean. There were French, dark Sicilians, Chinese carrying 
the weekly laundries home with care. There were Syrians 
with soft yet passionate eyes. Now and again a big fair 
Bulgar — a rare one who had not gone back to fight for his 
land — crossed before them. Yiddish sounded everywhere — Ger- 
man, Russian, Polish, Montenegrin — a jargon of half-familiar 
words rose up on Robert’s ear and flooded down for the mo- 
ment other and more familiar sounds. 

Over on the other side of the aisle from where Robert and 
Miss McGee were sitting, were a couple of Japanese, also, 
evidently on their way to Summer Park. They sat as silent 
as Miss McGee and Robert, but far more impassive than Miss 
McGee or even Robert could ever be. The “japs” or “chinks” 
as Katie indifferently called them, gazed too out of the open 
window by their side, noting silently every detail that passed 
before their eyes. They sat there (one of them wore the glasses 
of the West over his small slanting eyes) with their golden 
skins and their straight dark hair and their scrupulous Euro- 
pean dress and their immensely intelligent expression. “Say, 
will you look at them dagoes there,” Miss McGee whispered 
to Robert — it was the first remark she had made. “Cute, 
eh? Ain’t the wrist-watches they got the article!” 

She paused a moment and then she added, “I guess them 
chinks does themselves good out here.” 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


319 

Japs were dagoes to Miss McGee. They were “chinks.” 
They were anything. To Robert, as he glanced over at the calm 
faces, full of a latent cleverness that might at any moment, he 
felt, spring full-fledged from their brains, they brought a waft 
of cherry-blossom — a vision of fields of chrysanthemums, and 
of small exquisitely-garbed people making laughing pilgrimages 
to watch the beauty of the world. He saw a land, charming, 
joyous — a land that was only now beginning to be daubed over 
with the “civilization” of our West. He wondered what was 
going on behind that impassive golden exterior — behind those 
faces that looked like old ivory with the sun on it. He 
thought of saying to Katie McGee by his side how much 
more beautiful those little men would have looked in their 
own finely-embroidered mole-colored robes. And then it struck 
him as silly to say such a thing as that to Miss McGee. To 
her those small beautifully-turned men were “chinks.” Had 
it been someone else — someone with a clear comprehensive 
glance . . . 

Summer Park was all alight and alive with noise and tramp- 
ing of people. Everything seemed to have had the same idea 
as Robert — to get down by the water’s edge and get rest from 
the burning heat. Robert paid the entrance-money, they passed 
in at the swing gate, the young lady in the pay-box said to a 
friend at her side, “Gawd, ef tha’at ain’t the twenty-fir’rst 
million an’ one tha’at’s pa’assed in to-night!” — and then, 
slipping a hand underneath Miss McGee’s black-and-white- 
striped arm, Robert headed for the river, where he guessed the 
restaurant must be. His first thought was — food. 

He was right. He had the instinct for direction that is the 
right of most men and the wrong of most women. The restau- 
rant was where he had guessed it would be. The two went up 
the wooden rough steps that led to the railed-off platform where 
what to Katie McGee in her lady’s French without the ac- 
cents was “the cafe”; and after some searching they found a 
table round the corner — a little table for two, out of the noise 
and bustle (also out of the way, as they presently found, of 
much hope of rapid service) looking straight on the water 
which flowed calmly past the Park: and placed so that they 
might drink in every shining ripple of the great St. Lawrence 
as it shone in the light of the rising moon. 

“Say!” said Miss McGee, “my, ef this ain’t the limmutt!” — 
she meant of delight. 

If she had felt happy in the car she felt happier now. All 


320 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


the immediate miseries of the past weeks fell away from her. 
With her mercurial temperament she not only felt at the 
moment as if she had been silly to grieve over them, she felt 
as if they had never existed at all. “Ain’t I the fool-woman,” 
she said to herself, “to worry meself sick. What about ! What’s 
it’s a’all about, I want to know?” And with that, she laid 
her elbows on the table and clasped her pretty white hands 
in front of her chin that she leant lightly against them, and 
watched Robert earnestly consulting the menu — and smiled 
right down into the depths of her soul, and felt happy. The 
whole thing enchanted her. The situation of their table, the 
prospect of the river with the moon on it right before her, 
the noise and careless gayety all round her, the young ladies 
with their young gen’lemen friends meeting up on every side 
of her: the fact that she was there with Robert out to enjoy 
herself, the surprise of it all, the delight of being suddenly 
nipped up, as it were, from Penelope’s Buildings and swept 
over to this place of delight . . . Miss McGee was so happy 
she didn’t know what to do. She -felt lifted right out of her- 
self. She felt carried up to some great height, and poised 
there — and able to look down on the whole joy of the evening 
and yet, in some mysterious way, to take part in it. “I don’t 
care,” she said to herself, as Robert still studied the bill of 
fare, “ef I don’t never enjoy anythin’ again — I’m happy now. 
I’m happy now,” she repeated to herself, “an’ ef I was to die 
to-morrow — it’s been worth ut.” With this declaration of in- 
dependence in the face of everything bad, she looked across 
at Robert with an increase in her smile: and, quite unknown 
to herself — she was not thinking of her appearance — she looked 
charming. Her big eyes were shining; they looked bigger for 
the black half-circles that the heat draws round the eyes of 
those who have to bear it. Her ugly mouth was changed into 
its most charming look by its happy smile. Her hands were 
very white — as hands often are intensely white in the great 
heat: and her whole body was swinging with life. She looked 
alive, as she sat there. Age was far from her. It seemed 
impossible that she could ever have felt old. She was the 
youngest thing in sight. . . . 

“What will you have?” said Robert, looking up. “There’s 
cold meat of various kinds, and spaghetti, and we can have 
chops if we wait for them ... or there’s chicken.” 

He looked over at Miss McGee. His face had that in- 
tensely serious expression that comes over the face of a man 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


3 21 

when he is consulting a bill of fare. It seemed charming 
to Miss McGee that he should look like that. 

“I’d jes’ love chickun,” she said, after a moment’s pause, 
during which she was calculating in her mind which was the 
cheapest thing he had mentioned — and then choosing the most 
expensive on an unconsidered impulse. “I jes’ love ut . . .” 

“All right,” Robert said. “Waiter!” 

But it was one thing to say “Waiter” and another to have 
him. Waiters passed hurriedly to and fro; they went here, 
there, and everywhere, but the one place they didn’t seem to 
go was the little table where Robert and Miss McGee sat. At 
last Robert was obliged to go and take a waiter by the sleeve 
and personally conduct him where he wanted him to be; 
even then the waiter’s memory seemed somewhere else. He was 
there, but the rest of him had stayed behind. 

“Yessir,” he kept saying. “Yessir. Anything else, Sir.” He 
was English, and perhaps his soul was in England. But 
wherever it was it wasn’t in Summer Park that summer night 
when Robert and Miss McGee were down there. “Anything 
more, Sir?” said the waiter going away and bringing back 
everything they hadn’t ordered and nothing they had. . . . 

“I said — ” said Robert: and Miss McGee was amazed to 
hear the Englishism of his voice and the mastery of it. 

“Yessir,” said the waiter once more. He had crumbled to- 
gether at the sound of Robert’s voice. He had responded to 
Robert’s accent as the circus horse responds to the flick of 
the whip. 

“Yessir,” said the waiter. “I’ll bring it, Sir.” And when 
he came back again he said in a persuasive humble tone. 
“Very busy to-night, Sir. Hard to keep all the orders in your 
mind. . . .” 

They enjoyed their supper as they hadn’t enjoyed anything 
to eat for a long time. The chicken wasn’t bad and Miss 
McGee’s salad (Robert didn’t like salads) was entirely to 
her mind. The bread was given to them in little crusty rolls 
that tasted good. And the green peas, if they were out of a tin, 
had been put into that tin in France, and therefore had a 
“gout.” They ate and drank plentifully, and they enjoyed 
every mouthful. Miss McGee was glad, and said she was 
glad (which was noble in her) that Robert had discarded a 
transitory offer of hers to “bring some baskut, eh, an’ eat a 
lunch down by the river there.” “Isn’t it pleasanter,” Robert 
said, in that unexpectedly masculine way he had suddenly de- 


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322 

veloped, “to be eating our food in a civilized way, than be 
grabbing things out of a basket . . . ?” 

Miss McGee agreed that it was. She took the ice-cream that 
Robert ordered for her as a sort of extra gift from the gods, 
and ate that slowly, enjoying every mouthful. And when 
the English waiter had been persuaded to take the things away 
and bring them a little potful of coffee, they sat drinking 
that slowly, and watching the moonlight rising flush on the 
water, and making it more and more silvery white each min- 
ute. 

“It’ll be a silver pathway across,” said Robert, “before it’s 
done.” He laughed. “Shall we go across on it,” he said, 
“and see what’s at the other side . . . ?” 

And a pause fell between them. 

It was the one time in that whole evening that the shadow 
of the Lady fell across Miss McGee. 

When they had finished their coffee Robert paid for their 
meal (“thank you, Sir,” from the waiter — it felt like old times 
to be doing things decently like that), they got down from 
the platform that formed the “cafe,” and slowly, comfortably, 
as one walks when one is fed, they began to walk about the 
grounds. “One sure thing, it’ll come rain before long,” Miss 
McGee said, looking up into the Heavens. And when Robert 
said, “How do you know?” she replied, “Feel ut in me bones, 
I guess. That moon can’t faze me any. Mark me wor’rd, 
’twill come thunder before the noight is out.” 

This did not interfere with their enjoyment. They wandered 
about, watched the water-toboggan with its boat-loads of shriek- 
ing girls, coming tumbling down the water-shoot and landing, 
with a splash and a crash, in the pool below. “See them 
young ladies!” Miss McGee said, pressing Robert’s arm, as 
the girls came out of the boats, shaking themselves and the 
drops of water from them, laughing, calling to one another, 
“Oh my, say, didn’t ye feel the way ye might die !” — and then, 
clinging fast to the arms of their beaus, either went back 
to feel like dying once more, or went further and tried some 
other kind of extinction — at ten cents the show. 

“Want to get on?” enquired Robert. 

Miss McGee shook her head. 

Then they watched the circular railroad, plunging in and 
out of the most impossible curves — like a symbolist poem. 
They watched the railroad passengers getting greener and 
greener as the railroad became more and more circular . . . 


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323 

and then they strolled over to the “Atheletic Arena” as the 
man who stood shouting himself hoarse on the platform before 
it called it, and watched that. “Come on, Ladies an’ Gen’lemen. 
Come on, right in here . This is the Atheletic Arena. These 
are the Atheletes of the Wor’rld. Don’t loose yer opportunity, 
Gen’lemen an’ Ladies. Come on in. The Pay-Bawx is on yer 
right. The Atheletes of the Wor’rld is jes’ the other side the 
door. . . 

He was hoarse but determined. He was faint but pursuing. 
The strongest gen’leman (who was fat) came out on the 
little platform in front of the door when the ladies and gen’le- 
men outside seemed shy of going in. By and by the strongest 
lady (thin, and smiling with a conciliatory smile) also made 
her appearance outside. They stood bowing and waving their 
h^nds for a bit; and then, to give a simulacrum of the per- 
formance beginning, they disappeared inside the door again, 
and the hoarse man recommenced his remarks. “Don’t you 
miss yer chanst an’ be sawry after. Come in. The Pay-Bawx 
is to the right. The Show of the Age is about to com- 
mence ...” 

When it was time for the music to start — the orchestra, the 
supreme inducement Summer Park had to offer — it was Miss 
McGee who led the way to the square of chairs that was 
set out within a cordon in the center of the grounds. Robert 
paid down another twenty cents, and they both passed within 
the cordon, and took their places amongst the elect. Robert 
chose seats farther back than Miss McGee could have wished, 
because he wanted to watch the moon on the river — and he 
could only do that if he sat behind the restaurant platform 
which would otherwise have obstructed his view. He wasn’t 
expecting anything very much from the music under the con- 
ductorship of Facciatore, the “What’s-us-name” of his two cus- 
tomers’ conversation; but he thought it would make a nice ac- 
companiment to his thoughts if he could watch the silvery 
streak dancing on the water — and have visions of what he most 
wanted to see. In fact, immediately they had taken their seats, 
he did feel his indolent meditations begin to flow and lap in 
his brain much as the water went flowing past the Summer 
Park, lapping up against the banks as it went: But Miss 
McGee burst in upon these meditations and stopped them lap- 
ping by twitching his sleeve, “See there, eh, Mr. Fulton,” 
she whispered excitedly, “no, that way — there — to yer roight, eh ! 
Listen! That’s Mickey. Mickey Ryan there. Ye ain’t forgot.’* 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


324 

She twitched Robert’s sleeve violently again. “Them Ryans. 
The gen’leman I told ye I met up with the noight Mac gawn 
awf. . . The circumstance came trickling back to Robert’s 
memory. He wasn’t interested now as he hadn’t been inter- 
ested then. What was Mickey Ryan to him — or he to Mickey 
Ryan? The same feeling of faint dislike to the entire Ryan 
connection now came gently flowing over his consciousness 
at Miss McGee’s renewed mention of the name, as had flowed 
over it that bleak March night when she had come home from 
the depot so full of the Ryan Past. He glanced most indiffer- 
ently in the direction in which Miss McGee was continuing 
violently to urge him to look. 

“Oh,” he said. “Where?” 

And, out of the merest convention of politeness, he turned 
in the direction where Miss McGee’s twitching inspired him 
to look, and he saw Mickey. 

Mickey was in his element. He was there, fat as life, with 
lots of money in his pocket, and a good deal of “Scotch” in his 
stomach. He was, when Robert glanced that way, hanging over 
a small bit of painted wreckage that was clinging to his arm. 
The girl was prettiness on its last legs. She bore, to any eye 
instructed to see it, the marks of disease on her still pretty face. 
She had large blue eyes with nothing behind them. She had 
blackened eyebrows above the eyes and blackened circles below 
them. She had cheeks whitened as if she were the clown just 
going before the foot-lights. Her mouth was a vermilion streak 
cut across the whitened surface of her face. Yet, behind the 
make-up, Nature had done well. She had been pretty, this 
poor piece of wreckage that life’s storm was just casting up 
amongst the rocks. . . . 

Mickey was bending over his companion, laughing, saying, 
evidently, something “smart.” He was wholly engrossed with 
the work in hand. He had no eye for any possible acquaint- 
ance that might be at hand to observe him. He passed up 
the aisle to the dollar seats in the front: and as he went past 
Robert saw that he held his companion’s thin arm tightly 
gripped in his fat fingers. They almost closed round it, now 
and again lightly pressing the flesh they held. His face was 
red, his great lips looked unpleasantly moist — there was an 
expression in his eyes that made one think of an animal . . . 
when it is most animal and least intelligent. 

Robert felt within him the clinching of all the vague dis- 
taste he seemed hitherto to have so unreasonably felt for the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


325 

Ryan clan. He merely glanced at Mickey and his companion 
in the most casual way, and then he immediately glanced 
away again, conspicuously quite in the other direction, as 
if he wanted to have no more to do with them either in this 
world or any other world that might be to come. He said 
nothing. But his silence was more expressive than any words. 
And that fastidiousness of his — that troublesome accompani- 
ment of his life — rose up in him, swamping everything but a 
merely animal dislike; he felt that he detested the Mickeys 
of this world and all their ways: for the second, sexual pas- 
sion seemed to him a purely horrible thing, a wholly de- 
testable thing, an unclean beastly thing. He leaned back with 
an expression Miss McGee had never seen before on his face. 
“Oh, my,” she said, loosening her grip on Robert’s sleeve, “ain’t 
he the busy ape, eh?” Through her mind passed the question 
“ ’Tain’t her , I guess, as he keeps the flat fer!” And then the 
thought of Biddy Ryan alone at home somehow slipped through 
her mind: and, almost at the same second she thought, “I 
shouldn’t ’a’ pointed um out. He’s the clean bo’oy, bless um.” 
It struck her as all right that she should see Mickey in this 
Don Juan phase, but Robert was something different, some- 
thing removed — she shouldn’t have pointed out such sights to 
him. She felt as a man might feel in the presence of a young, 
very sexually ignorant girl. An awkward pause fell between 
them. 

“See them kiddies over there, eh,” Katie McGee said after 
a minute or two’s silence, to distract Robert’s attention. She 
felt that this sudden access of fastidiousness on Robert’s part 
had made a cleavage between them, and she wanted to bridge 
it over. “See them kiddies,” she said. “Ain’t they cute, eh?” 
Robert, looking beyond her outstretched finger, saw a see-saw 
erected behind the restaurant between where they sat and the 
river: and beside the see-saw were two Nurses in white uni- 
forms; and on to the see-saw these Nurses put little ones left 
there in their charge by mothers come to the Summer Park for 
a “gorgeous time” and anxious for the attainment of this 
gorgeous time to be rid of their offspring for an hour or two. 
The Nurses had careful capable hands. They regulated the 
“turns.” They held the tiniest of the little people on: and, 
with shrieks of joy, the tinies felt the secure hands at the 
back of them as they sailed into the air and came down again 
with a bump. Bands of kiddies stood waiting their turns. 
“Time fer me, now. Me turn again ...” The little vehement 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


326 

high-pitched protests came ringing over to where Robert and 
Miss McGee sat: in the moonlight they could see the babies 
tossing high in the air — they could hear the happy cries of 
delight at the rocking motion. The Nurses stood one at each 
end of the see-saw like immaculate white Policewomen. 

“Pretty, ain’t ut?” Miss McGee said. 

She glanced at Robert. 

“Yes,” he said, smiling, “it is nice.” He paused a second. 
“It’s the nicest thing here by far,” he said. 

Perhaps he wouldn’t have said that if Mickey hadn’t gone 
by just before; and Miss McGee didn’t like his saying it — 
for a great many very complicated reasons which to any woman 
wouldn’t be complicated at all. She was hesitating what reply 
to make when Facciatore made his appearance: and as soon as 
she heard him tap the wood of the desk before him with his 
baton, all idea of making replies to anything faded from her. 
She straightened up in her seat and became all eyes and ears. 
Mickey, the kiddies tossing in the moonlight, the sound of 
the river lapping by, the huge attentive audience, the restless 
walkers in the grounds round about the corded-in portion 
where they were sitting: all these things, and Robert himself — 
yes, Robert himself! — became non-existent for Miss McGee as 
Facciatore called the attention of the orchestra before him by 
the strokes on the stand. Miss McGee sat gazing. She had 
never heard a band before — except the military bands that ac- 
companied Canada’s regiments to the war. She remembered the 
Irish Rovers’ band — God bless ut ! But this was different from 
that. She, anticipated she hardly knew what. She sat up 
extraordinarily straight. Something grew tense in her. 

Facciatore’s correct evening-clothed back was towards them. 
They faced the big orchestra of white-faced men; faintly out- 
lined in -the electric lights that hung above the orchestra were 
the “queer things” the men played. “What’s that, eh?” Miss 
McGee whispered excitedly to Robert: the Mickey episode 
was so much green cheese to her now. “What’s that great 
quare-lookiri bunch o’ sticks there?” She meant the bassoon, 
but Robert could not tell her what it was. And, anyway, be- 
fore he had time to answer, Facciatore, standing still and 
brilliantly outlined in the electric bulb immediately above his 
head, raised the baton he had tapped with, stood a moment mo- 
tionless — strained: and then, with the merest turn of his wrist, 
led his men into a triumphant wave of sound — and Katie 
McGee into the Eternal City. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


327 

It seemed to Katie, listening, as it the Heavens themselves had 
opened and were allowing her to see the eternal throne with 
God upon it. She felt, as the orchestra poured forth its waves 
of sound, as if this were life. She felt that, if this were 
indeed to come* when our bodies are dust, the sooner this life 
were over the better. She ceased, after a while, to think 
at all. She merely sat there in the half-light betwixt the 
electric bulbs and the moon, with the tears quite unconsciously 
springing forth out of her £yes and coursing down her cheeks. 
She sat, slightly bent forward, gazing at Facciatore’s back — 
blissful as she had never been blissful before. 

When that first piece came to an end the moon was shining 
on the water much as it had shone when Facciatore began. It 
seemed marvelous to Miss McGee that the world was as it 
had been before that music played. “He seemed to do ut with 
his hands, eh,” she said to Robert in a low subdued voice. 
“Seems as ef he drawed ut out of ’em. Seems as ef he waved 
them hands an’ the music come. . . .” And when Facciatore 
struck the music-stand with his baton once more, Miss McGee 
fell once more into the trance of delight, and stayed ecstatically 
in it till the last notes of the second piece had died out on the 
evening air. 

She didn’t know what they were playing. She hadn’t the 
slightest idea of the names of the pieces or the names of the 
composers; and if she had had, they would have meant nothing 
to her. She simply knew that she was happy. That she was 
happy as she had never been before. That the waves of 
sound were pouring out and flooding her, but that she was 
buoyed up by them at the same time, and -floating amongst 
them — floating where? She felt, while Facciatore played, 
that she was truly on her way to the eternal kingdom where 
things are as they should be — not as they are in this im- 
perfect world but as they are in our minds and souls in our 
happiest sweetest moods. . . . 

When the music ceased Miss McGee put her hand on Robert’s 
arm, and they made their way, close together, to the revolving 
gate by which they had come in. “ ’Twas grand,” Miss McGee 
said in a low tone, as they stood waiting for the car that was 
to take them home again. “ ’Twas grand, eh. I shan’t never 
forgit ut.” And then she said, “Them hands, eh. Them 
hands . . .!” 

The ride home was a very silent one. They returned as 
they had come, close together on one of the little front seats of 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


328 

the car. There were crowds all round them, pressing them close 
together, hemming them in; but they hardly felt the crowds. 
The music had done its work on Robert too. He hadn’t 
listened to it, but the waves of sound had broken on him, 
as it were, and made their way into his mind by crevices and 
chinks. They had had an odd effect on him. They had set 
his thoughts working in a most practical way. He had thought 
to himself when Facciatore had been leading his men into 
one of his most triumphal bursts of sound, “I must save some 
money. How am I ever to get out of that place if I don’t. I’ll 
work. I will work. I’ll finish the Canada Book first. Perhaps 
that might be some good if — if I were to turn it round some- 
way — bring more life into it.” And then he had thought, 
“When I read it to her, she’ll know. . . .” And the practical 
thoughts had merged into remembrance of a sunny evening room 
and the Lady in her vivid blue blouse with the copper tray 
shining at her elbow. What friendliness in those eyes! How 
they might light up — change — speak ... if things were to 
come different — sometime. . . . 

He went on allowing these things to pass before his mental 
eyes while Miss McGee sat close pressed to him in the car. 
She was thinking nothing. She was lost in the clouds of 
sound that still hung about her. “Eh, ’twas grand!” she mur- 
mured at intervals. “Say, ef that wasn’t great! I shan’t 
never forgit ut.” They had had three treats together — this 
was the third: but this treat outdid the others as the sun 
outshines the stars. The vision of Facciatore’s hands — those 
hands that had drawn melody out of a living instrument of 
sixty souls— came before the eyes of Katie McGee again and 
again. Was anything more wonderful than that? Could any- 
thing more miraculous await her even in her Father’s house? 
“Them hands,” she whispered once more to Robert, after they 
got out of the car: she kept the hand he had taken to help her 
out of the car pressed close to his side. “Wasn’t them hands, 
great, eh, Mr. Fulton? Wasn’t they foine!” A little quiver 
of joy kept running through her all the way from the car to 
Drayton Place; the sense of ecstasy had not entirely left her 
as she turned in by the disreputable door of Penelope’s Build- 
ings. “Oh my,” she said, as she parted from Robert at her 
own door, “that’s loife, ain’t ut, Mr. Fulton? Ain’t ut 
loife?” She felt that at last she had lived: she felt wide 
awake as she hardly ever had felt before. Bed seemed waste 
of time. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


329 


CHAPTER XLIV 

I N her weather prophecy Miss McGee was right enough. She 
hadn’t lived in Canada with an observant eye on the winds 
and rains for close on half a century for nothing. The 
thunderstorm broke out almost immediately after she and Robert 
got back to Penelope’s Buildings; indeed there were occasional 
big drops and a deep threatening growl or two from the massed 
clouds while they were walking from the car to their own street- 
door: and hardly were they safe under the roofs of their respec- 
tive flats when the rain broke and the thunder and lightning 
cast itself loose from yoke — and the world was deluged with 
storm and fury and sound. 

A thunderstorm is a grand thing. But it is a thing that 
is pleasanter to share than to enjoy alone. Miss McGee, sitting 
at her window watching the downpouring sheets of rain — 
through which even the inky sky was completely blotted from 
sight — was conscious that she would have felt more secure with 
Robert at her side. However she was no coward, whatever else 
she was; and, in a sort of way, the storm seemed to suit her 
mood. The peals of thunder, the flash after flash of brilliant 
malignant light, seemed to come near something within her 
and soothe it. She had a dim sort of feeling somewhere that 
if there could be a great storm — a really great one, and the world 
might be destroyed by it as it was by the old storm of the 
sacred history — it would be a good thing. “We could build our- 
selves up somethin’ better, p’raps,” she said to herself. And 
when the storm was over and she crept to bed, it was a soothed, 
unecstatic Miss McGee that crept there. She lay for a long 
while thinking over the evening, seeing the Park in her mind’s 
eye, catching sight of a confused phantasmagoria of pictures — 
the Conductor with his white hands that drew the music 
out of his human instrument, the big fat man at the “Atheletic” 
Arena, the “atheletic” lady, poor thing, in her insufficient tights 
and conciliatory smile, the mass of children, throwing them- 
selves pell-mell on the see-saw and laughing and shrieking with 
delight, the calm legal appearance of the Nurses — and the 
excited illegal look of Mickey as he bent over the poor little 
painted thing on his arm with that hot look in his eye. “It 
was a grand evenin’, bless um,” was Miss McGee’s last waking 
thought. She relaxed herself completely with that thought, and 
lay before these pictures of her remembrance as a cat lies 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


330 

before the fire — and slept. She slept like a child, and she woke 
up to cheerfulness and a cool world. There was no need 
for the moment of even a gaiete de malheur: she still felt, as 
she had felt at the Summer Park, happy. She felt soothed, as if 
her nerves had stopped sticking up on end and were all lying the 
right way again, as they had not lain for a long time. The 
thunderstorm proved to be a definite break in the weather. 
It inaugurated a rainy season such as Regalia, so the news- 
papers said, had not known for half a century, which always 
seems the journalistic limit of time before remarkable events 
repeat themselves, and it rained, as if the deluge Miss McGee 
had been wishing for on the night of the thunderstorm was 
indeed at hand. The whole of September was a dripping 
month. Day after day dawned in the same dull manner, with 
the rain either coming down in scant sparing drops — something 
indefinably moist like a Scotch mist — or shooting past the win- 
dow in a slanting stream. Umbrellas that had hardly been in 
use for years were looked out, and people went about in their wet 
clothes (mackintoshes were scarce amongst the Regalians) and 
cursed their luck. In Britain, or in Western Canada rain is 
a normal experience and people prepare for it. But in Eastern 
Canada a rainy day is a rare thing, to be commented on; 
umbrellas and mackintoshes are the exception and not the rule: 
and when rain overtakes a community not prepared for it — 
it strikes hard and strong. Colds became prevalent. Regalia 
went about sneezing and coughing; polite old country persons 
said “Bless you !” to other persons. And the afflicted one said 
“Well, say, ef I ain’t got the worst cold . . . !” 

Robert was amongst the sufferers. He had been addicted to 
catching colds in the old days in England, and now he 
began to resurrect this talent. He caught a frightful cold and 
went about sneezing first, and then, later, coughing a deep 
hollow resounding formidable sort of cough that found its echo 
in Miss McGee’s heart. “It’s nothing,” he said — he was not a 
fuss-maker. “Don’t you know that the coughs that sound the 
worst are the best ones?” And then he laughed and said, “It’s 
a workhouse cough.” But that was no enlightenment for 
Miss McGee. She didn’t know what a workhouse was. There 
are no workhouses in Canada. 

Whether it was due to the collapse of the weather or not, 
Miss McGee, as September went on, collapsed once more into 
the deepest depression. She felt so miserable indeed that it was 
hard work not to show it to Robert — not to talk about it con- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


331 

tinually. Constantly there came to her lips complaints about 
life, bitter wretched things that she wanted to say. For 
the most part she pushed them back and didn’t say them. 
Once or twice she spoke crossly, snappishly, almost rudely to 
Robert, and then was overwhelmed with remorse. He never 
answered these outbursts of Miss McGee’s. If he was inobserv- 
ant of the common outward things of life, he was perceptive 
enough — though sometimes quite unconsciously perceptive — of 
the inner things. He was like an extremely sensitive instru- 
ment that registers impressions without knowing why it does so 
— instinctively he knew when the world went out of tune about 
him. And when things went out of tune he felt sorry for them. 

One night in September after a long day’s work — daily 
occupation had begun to come in again regularly with Septem- 
ber — Miss McGee had returned home what she herself called 
“done.” It was the first day of her annual fall week with 
Mrs. Barclay. They had spent the day in interminable dis- 
cussions as to what was to be done with last year’s clothes 
so as to make them look like this year’s, and Miss McGee 
had come in so worn out with the struggle that, wonderful to 
relate, she had sent even Robert away so that she might get 
to bed immediately after the evening meal. She had one of her 
rare bad headaches; one of those headaches that, coming on in 
quite an ordinary manner over the brow, creep backward over 
the skull until the whole head is wrapped in a cowl of pain. 
Miss McGee had had these headaches at intervals all her 
life long — she was what doctors call of a rheumatic or gouty 
diathesis. Of late years the headaches had come further and 
further apart, and when they had come the pain had not been 
so great, and she flattered herself that she was “growin’ out 
of ’em.” But this was what she called “a real old teaser.” 
It was an exquisite headache. A fearfully, wickedly painful 
one. She had borne up with it as well as she could during 
the day, and when she had come home she had thrown some- 
thing together for the supper as well as she could; and then, 
after the supper that she hadn’t been able to taste, she had 
been obliged to ask Robert to go — and, feeling more dead than 
alive, she had crawled to bed. It -wasn’t her mind that was 
bothering her this time. Pain like that blots out all pos- 
sibility of thought. It was simply that, for the time being, her 
body, had got “one too many for her,” and there was nothing 
to do but to give it its way and let it rest. With the supper 
dishes still on the table she had gone into her bed-room, 


332 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


cast off her clothes anyhow — anywhere — and, with a feeling 
of sick relief crept into bed. Once between the sheets, with 
her aching, bursting, pain-drawn head on the pillow, she had 
experienced the first morsel of comfort that had come her 
way that day: and, oddly enough — or perhaps not so oddly, it 
does happen sometimes with that species of pain — she had 
almost instantly dropped off to sleep. Her last waking thought 
was, “With God’s help I’ll wake without ut.” 

She was no sooner asleep — or it seemed so to her — than she 
dreamed. She dreamed that she was missing. That people in 
Penelope’s Buildings, not having seen her come out of her 
flat for some days, were in a hullabaloo about her. She dreamed 
that Mrs. Savourin had suggested that her door should be 
broken in, and that Robert had said, “No. Let me first climb up 
on a ladder and look through the window. Perhaps she’s 
there. We haven’t any right to break her door in.” She 
dreamed that Robert had climbed up on a high ladder set 
against the wall (and that, absurdly, she had watched him 
climbing with her heart in her mouth — Sure the bo’oy’ll fall!) 
and that he had stood on the ladder and looked through 
the window of the room they had so often sat in together: 
and that (she was there in some mysterious way looking down 
on it all) she saw Robert looking at her own body lying face 
downward near the door — lying there as if she had made for the 
door in a blind effort to get out, and had failed to reach it. She 
saw — through Robert’s eyes always — her body, stretched out, 
with its arms in front of it, palms down to the ground (as 
if her hands had tried to reach the lock) and her body had 
a helpless crumpled-up look as if something had gone out of 
it; as if it were uninformed with life. She felt that the thing 
that had informed it with life was here — up above where she 
was, watching Robert’s face as he stood at the window on the 
ladder, looking in. . . . 

She waked up with the pain in her head lessened, but with 
a cold stream of perspiration trickling down her body. “God in 
Heaven,” she said to herself, “what’s the matter with me 
dreamin’ that, eh? It’ll not be the end — yet. Mercy!” She sat 
up in bed and composed herself with her hands, stroking her hair 
into position, and putting her night-clothes straight. “Mercy!” 
she said several times. “What made me think of that.” 
And she crossed herself again and again, praying to God 
that He would take away evil visions from her and protect her 
through the night. The picture of her mother, so gentle and 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


333 

calm and composed, as she had been when Katie was a little 
girl and she had come to the bedside to see that all was safe 
and well came over her. “Ma’a,” she said. “Ma’a, dear, you 
come, eh, to see that little Katie’s safe.” She felt that God 
had sent the vision of her mother to stay and comfort her. 
And then, waking up a little more, it came over her that 
she was only half-awake. She lay down again and composed 
herself to sleep; and once more as soon as she was asleep — 
or it seemed this way to her — she dreamed: but this time 
she dreamed differently. 

She dreamed that it was the old time in Regalia when there 
were no electric cars and the antiquated horse-cars that she 
remembered so well — had she not taken them time after time 
in the days of her mother’s illness ? — were running. She 
dreamed that she — Katie McGee — was running after the old 
omnibus as she had so often had to do, and that the ’bus was 
full and that there was no room for her in it, and that she had 
to get into it; in her dream it was urgent that she should 
reach it, somehow or other clamber inside and get a ride home. 
She ran in the slushy mud — it was, in her dream, the time of 
the thaw — and vainly she tried to cry to the passengers who 
were hanging outside like a swarm of bees, that she wanted 
help. Help. She would have implored a helping hand but, 
as so often it happens in dreams, power of speech was taken 
away from her. At last she managed to catch hold of the rail 
that bordered the entrance steps to the ’bus. She hoisted herself 
up by the strength of her arm on to the bottom step of the 
’bus — and there she clung. It was a perilous situation. She 
could not always keep hold of the rail. It slipped out of 
her ice-cold fingers, the step was slippery with mud, the swarm 
of passengers descended on her and pushed her off. Sometimes 
she was running once more in the wet slush, sometimes she was 
able once more to catch hold of the rail and hoist herself up on 
the step; always, all through the dream, there was a sense of 
misfortune impending, a sense that if she were to lose the 
’bus altogether she would be lost. She tried to call to the 
passengers — she implored them mutely with her eyes. They 
stood on the steps — there was such a crowd of them that she 
could never catch so much as a glimpse of the inside of the 
’bus . . . and then, just as she was waking up with the 
’bus disappearing into a sort of dim mist of nothingness, 
it seemed to her dimly that a hand was stretched out from 
somewhere; the hand lifted her securely on to the wet slippery 


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334 

step — it took hold of her — upheld her — guided her past the 
passengers and into the inside of the ’bus 

She waked up. Gray morning light was struggling in at 
the window. The pain in her head was gone. There was 
only the stiffness left and the bruised feeling that follows 
such an attack of pain. “Glory be to God!” was her first 
thought: and then, as she turned instinctively to the dollar 
clock that stood on her bureau, “Oh my !” she said — and 
she leapt from her bed. She had overslept herself, dreaming 
like that! She was late. 

It was only when she was drinking her hurried cup of tea that 
her dreams came back to her. They were extraordinarily clear 
in her mind. They seemed realler than real — etched in her 
memory by some occult process. She laughed a little at the 
second dream — pushing the memory of the first as far away 
from her as she could. “Oh my, Glory be to God,” she said 
to herself, “ ’tis the way loife treats me, eh!” And with the 
thought of her clutching to the rail, slipping off the slippery 
step, at the vision of herself wading in her dream through the 
slush of the world as she ran after the too-rapidly-moving ’bus, 
she laughed again: not a too-mirthful laugh, but a laugh. “ ’Tis 
meself sure a’alroight,” she said to herself. “ ’Tis me after the 
’bus o’ loife an’ never catchin’ ut.” And then, after a second, 
she added, “Sure, ain’t ut the limmutt, eh!” And as she went 
hurrying along the Wellston Road — for she was due at the 
Barclay’s — she realized that this dream-’bus was only another 
manifestation of her hard round world which she could not 
enter for want of entrance-money. She stood on the entrance 
step at 23 Wellston Road panting a little after she had rung 
the electric bell, and just fifteen minutes later than she 
should legitimately have done so (“Sure, ’tis not Mrs. Barclay’ll 
moind!” — this was a moment when the Barclay star shone) and, 
unexpectedly, the end of the dream came back. The running 
along in the slush had been so vivid in her mind that the 
being lifted out of the slush — hurried and dimmer than the 
rest as this had been — had slipped clean out of her memory. 
Now as she stood on the well-whitened door-step waiting for 
Jennet to open the door, the hand that had taken her, steadied 
her, helped her where she had wanted to go seemed onee more 
to take hold of her. The conclusion of her dream was so 
clear in her mind now that it seemed to her to blot all the rest 
of the dream out. Here, in the sunlight, about to begin her 
prosaic day’s work, far from the region of dreams, yes, even 


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335 

here on the door-step at No. 23 Wellston Road, she still seemed 
to feel the comforting pressure of that large protecting hand. 
It seemed to touch her as hand never had touched her before. 
It almost seemed to her to . . . Jennet stood with the door open 
in her hand. 

“Good mor’rnin’, Miss McGee,” Jennet said in her down- 
right Scotch voice, dispersing with its very accent any kind 
of illusionary vision, “it’s a fine day for once.” 

“It is that, Jennet, a’alroight,” Miss McGee said, stepping 
in to Jennet’s clean hall, and scraping her boots on Jennet’s 
well-shaken mat. “ ’Tis the foine day, thanks be to God. An’ 
’tis not too many of ’em He’s been givin’ us of late.” 

And she went on scraping and brushing and getting the mud 
off the soles and sides of her boots while Jennet, standing by, 
considered whether she altogether approved of her Presbyterian 
God being dragged so familiarly into the conversation. She 
liked Miss McGee in spite of many differences. She decided to 
say nothing. 

“Will ye be steppin’ up-stairs when ye’re ready,” she said. 
“I’ve a fine hot muffin I’ll be bringin’ for yer breakfast. . . .” 
And, with that agreeable indication of what was to come, Jennet 
disappeared down the stairs to the old-fashioned kitchen — the 
house in Wellston Road had been built by the Barclays thirty 
years before — to reconnoiter the muffins and tea. 

Oddly enough, Miss McGee did not speak of her dreams to 
Robert— she could not have told you why. She was accustomed 
to tell Robert everything — even such trivial things as dreams: 
in their dull lives, even dreams were things to talk about — but 
this time she said nothing about either of her dreams' to her 
friend. She did tell them to Father O’Rourke in the confes- 
sional: and she got rid of them that way. She felt, if she 
didn’t tell them, that she might be haunted by them. They 
were so very real. She thought she had better get rid of* them 
by confessing them. So she did confess them, with other 
things . . . and they faded into their place. After a week or 
so she hardly thought of thpm again. 

CHAPTER XLV 

O N the last day of September poor old Mrs. Morphy died. 
She was not old in years, she was a woman of but fifty- 
three, but somehow, during her illness, people had got to 
think of her as old. She seemed old. She had, during the last 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


336 

unbearable weeks, taken on all the ways of an old woman; 
she had got to look like an old woman — someone who had 
been born far far back in the world’s history; someone who had 
had time to gather to herself a load of humanity’s suffering, 
and who was wearing away under the weight of the suffering 
and the years. She was dead: and everyone was at heart re- 
lieved. They wore long faces, but to themselves they said 
“Thank God!” And even out loud they said (only they didn’t 
say it out loud but in low voices to one another), “Say, ain’t it 
the mercy she’s been took! You couldn’t want her to go on 
suff’rin’, eh.” So they excused themselves for being thankful 
to be rid of her and her Unbearable pain. 

Nonnie cried her eyes out. She was perhaps the one creature 
(and she had had the worst end to carry) who deeply re- 
gretted Mrs. Morphy. Moll McKennay sent round a bunch 
of lilies at a dollar apiece with a card tied to them “Marguerite’s 
and Patrick’s last love.” She “said it with flowers.” The 
lilies were laid with the poor old woman, and Nonnie hovered 
round the “casket” in her down-at-heel black clothes and 
thought them lovely and thought her mother lovely and shed 
tear after tear of fatigue and wretchedness. 

Mrs. Morphy did look — not lovely perhaps, but majestic and 
handsome. When Miss McGee arrived at the poor outlying 
shack to take her turn at the watching — she had claimed that 
privilege as soon as the news of her old friend’s death had 
reached her — she stood beside the coffin, looking down into it, 
and she said to herself, “He couldn’t help seein’ she’d been a 
pretty woman in her day now.” She meant Robert. So was he 
intertwined with her every thought. 

The undertakers’ men had done their direst by Mrs. Morphy 
— Pat McKennay was paying for the funeral, and he had di- 
rected that it should be “in stoyle,” like Miss McGee’s cus- 
tomers’ gowns. The professionals had taken the sparse locks 
that in Mrs. Morphy’s life-time had been in all the places they 
shouldn’t be and they had waved them with hot tongs. The 
hair that had once been golden like Nonnie’s and now was a 
faded white, was banded in regular waves on Mrs. Morphy’s 
forehead. The face had been “treated” in some way so that 
it had almost a bloom of youth. The teeth which had never 
been in poor Mrs. Morphy’s mouth during her illness had been 
shoved once more into place. Her knotted hands had been 
whitened and laid crosswise on her bosom. The unwieldly 
porpoise-like corpulence of her, that had taken away all idea of 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


337 


beauty to the unseeing bystander for so many years, didn’t 
show now that she was “at rest,” as Miss McGee called it. 
She lay in her coffin straight and calm, and into her face — 
in spite of all the decorative efforts of those who had “handled 
stiff” — had come the inevitable look of death’s majesty. Her 
quiet unresponsive face seemed to say “I am gone. I have 
escaped. I have left my shell behind and I stamped on it, 
before I left it, my own ineffable majesty. I have left en- 
graven my farewell. But, though I am still here, speaking to 
you — I am gone. Farewell! You can do me no more harm 
now.” Marguerite’s lilies gave forth a thick sensuous odor. 
The room was full of it. And it was full too of that great 
calmness and dignity that made the people who came and 
stood beside Mrs. Morphy in her last bed, lower their voices. 
“Say, ain’t she the thing, eh,” they whispered to one another. 
“Swa’all!” And the facile tears rolled down their face^ and 
then they turned to poor washed-out Nonnie — big with her near- 
approaching motherhood — and asked her in the 'same whisper 
what her mother said before she died and who she said 
it to, and who the Firm had, been who laid her out, and 
what flower-man Moll’s lilies come from an’ my, ain’t they 
swa’all ! 

To Miss McGee’s superstition her dream of Robert looking 
through the window at her own dead body meant the fore- 
telling of the death of this old friend. “Sure,” she said, 
“that’s what ’tis. I had to dream of death an’ I got ut all 
tangled up. ’Twas Mrs. Morphy me moind was after.” And 
as she stood beside the coffin she offered up prayer after 
prayer for the old woman. She had not felt so deeply and so 
ecclesiastically moved for a long while. With the departure 
of the old friend, old times surged up into her mind, her 
mother’s teaching, the old devotion to the strict rites of the 
church. She prayed, and she laid the little bunch of violets 
she had brought (hot-house forced violets, almost scentless 
and quite out of season, but royally purple and exquisite to 
look at) close up to the neck of the old. woman. She tucked 
them in where they would hardly be seen. “No, Nonnie,” she 
said, “let ’em be. They’re a trust-word betwixt yer mother an’ 
me. They’re not fer the other folks to git ta’alkin’ about.” 

It was in the evening that all this happened. Miss McGee 
had come on straight after the hasty little evening meal she had 
prepared for Robert, and after a long day at Mrs. Barclay’s. 
Mrs. Barclay had tried to be nice; she knew Mrs. Morphy well 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


338 

by name: in her long association with Katie McGee she knew 
all Katie’s cronies, and had even seen and spoken with some of 
them. She had sympathized from the bottom of a truly kind 
heart at the taking away of one of Katie’s old props, as it were, 
of friendship. Mrs. Barclay had reached the age when she 
knew what it felt like to have these old props removed, one by 
one, and to feel life becoming one-sided, tottering, unsafe, with- 
out the old trusted helps and stays. She had meant to be thor- 
oughly kind, but unfortunately, the talk had turned on the War: 
talk could hardly fail to turn on the War during the autumn 
months of 1918 when the vitality of the world was so nearly 
exhausted and the end of the War was so near at hand. Mrs. 
Barclay was patriotic in that infuriating way that can not only 
see no wrong in what one’s country does but also is necessarily 
obliged to see no right in what any other country may possibly 
do. To Mrs. Barclay, England (preferably under Queen Vic- 
toria, reluctantly, under George V) was the one country of the 
world. What England — the old oligarchic England that seems 
with the passing of the War to be passing too — did was right. 
England could do no wrong. Anyone or anything that ventured 
to differ from what Mrs. Barclay called England (she meant 
the bit of England that has no sympathy with any new aims 
but always wants to go on exactly as it used to do) was a 
heretic and a fanatic and a madman and a bolshevist. Mrs. 
Barclay had no words — or rather, perhaps, it would have been 
better had she not had them — to express what she thought of 
labor troubles, Ireland, Russia, everything that was not 
Allied, agitation in general including all women’s demands 
about anything; she wanted the world to be arranged in an all- 
over state of everyone being entirely contented in that station 
to which it had pleased somebody else to call them . . . and 
the Union Jack sailing triumphantly over the whole. Miss 
McGee had passed the day feeling as if she were listening un- 
interruptedly to the strains of “God Save the King,” and, fine 
anthem as that is, she had felt inclined at moments to raise a 
counter-strain of “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.” To stand all 
day with your hat off (metaphorically speaking) and to have 
your Irish eye obsessed at dinner by the Union Jack unspread- 
ing itself in a golden vayse (as it did on Mrs. Barclay’s dinner- 
table on this occasion) is rather too much — even if the original 
thing is good. Miss McGee had come away from the Barclay 
establishment not at all as she had stood on its step a morning 
or so before. The Barclay star had set as rapidly as it had 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


339 

ascended. “The divil take her, the fool old woman that she is.” 
Miss McGee had said to herself, not furiously this time but 
with a kind of cold contained rage, as she was descending 
Jennet’s well-kept door-step, “she’s ta’alks the way there ain’t 
no Ireland at a’all.” Miss McGee tightened her mind, her brain, 
her determination, her will-power, everything she possessed, in- 
side and out, as she was coming down the Wellston Road on 
the way to the car. “But there is,” she remarked to the cir- 
cumambient air. “There is, you bet. An’ England’ll foind ut 
out. There’s a Church, too,” Miss McGee had further remarked 
to the air a little bit further on — she did not mean the Methodist 
Establishment to which Mrs. Barclay so punctually paid her 
respects each Sunday, “There’s a Church, mark me wor’rd, an’ 
I guess Mrs. Barclay’s goin’ to foind that out for a’all she don’t 
know ut.” Miss McGee had felt furiously ecclesiastical. There 
was nothing in the world that could make her so ecclesiastical 
as Mrs. Barclay. Whenever Katie had been to Wellston Road 
she always wanted to run to confession immediately afterwards 
and confess all Mrs. Barclay’s sins — just to prove that she — 
Kitty McGee! — was a Member of the One True Church . . . 
never mind whether she had been willing to accept Mitt or 
not! 

After all this turmoil it was a relief to come and sit by poor 
Mrs. Morphy’s coffin, Mrs. Morphy, who, for all her failings, 
had been a true daughter of the church. “Can’t git to Mass to- 
day, McGee, dear,” she had said when her leg got bad — and be- 
fore it too, if the truth be told, “but ye’ll say a prayer fer me, 
eh?” Mrs. Morphy had always added. She had meant to get 
to church even though she had very rarely got there. 

Miss McGee thought of all Mrs. Morphy had been. How 
generous she had been with what money she had had! One 
of Robert’s remarks in an early section of his Canada Book, 
‘The Canadians will let you have food or give you money, but 
these forms of benevolence do not call for much imagination, 
nor does one need to pause in one’s race with hustle in order 
to bestow them,’ had always been a puzzle to Miss McGee. 
Why wasn’t it a fine thing to be ready with your money? Why 
wasn’t it good to share your food an’ drink? She had never 
had the courage to ask Robert to explain, and now as she 
thought of Mrs. Morphy’s generosity, interthreaded with her 
thought was a remembrance of this saying of Robert’s. Well, 
anyway, Mrs. Morphy had been good. That was one sure thing. 
She had welcomed you at all times to her house and home, she 


340 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


had been truly hospitable, never grudging the bite of* food or 
the swallow of drink (especially the latter), happy to share to 
the last bone with you, never mind if the drink was out of the 
bottle or the bone served wholesale out of the pot. She had 
been a kind woman, true to the Church, a fond mother — with 
the big heart that was willing to take into it Mac or Bert Baird 
or any strange boy or girl that came her way and was just 
passably good to her. “Sure, he’s the foine bo’oy when he’s not 
in drink!” she had said of unsavory Dan. “Mac’ll miss his 
Old Lady,” Miss McGee said to herself: and a vision of the 
Old Lady going out with the “bo’oys” for that last treat, the 
picture of Mrs. Morphy in her out-door things with the black- 
beaded bonnet she always wore — “Sure, who am I to be dressin’ 
meself up, fer the love of God!” — and the old comfortable boots 
that Mrs. Morphy hadn’t scrupled to wear on all occasions came 
before her eyes. And then Miss McGee had a picture of the 
two bo’oys, not in the least ashamed of the old sweetheart they 
had in tow; taking her to the Movie Show and to supper after- 
wards . . . and Miss McGee remembered how done she had 
been after it. “Sure, there’s good in Mac,” Miss McGee said 
to herself. And there was a painful twist somewhere about her 
heart to think that Robert didn’t like these people, couldn’t see 
any good in them : that their kindliness was non-existent for him 
just because their way of speech was not his, and their manner 
of eating was alien. “There’s good in Mac, be-lieve me,” Miss 
McGee said over and over again to herself, sitting beside the 
old woman’s body. “He’s a good fella and that gir’rl’s doin' 
well fer herself whoever she may be that’s gittin’ um.” And 
then her thoughts wove themselves about Rose. “She’s the fool- 
gir-rl, eh!” — and her heart went atwist again as she thought of 
Rose’s face with its marks of suffering, all resolutely held to- 
gether, her tight lips and the blue circles under her eyes. “It’s 
a mess of a wor’rld,” Miss McGee said, “it’s a mess of a wor’rld. 
There’s no good to be had of ut — it’s just a mess. . . .” 

And she put her hand against the side of the coffin and held 
it there. She felt nearer that way to her old friend. 

She wasn’t alone in her watching. Mrs. Morphy, the Old 
Lady, had had many friends, and they had come to do honor 
to her kind heart by watching beside it now that it was stilled 
forever. Mrs. Garry herself had been there, it appeared, in the 
afternoon — whatever else ye moight have to say against her 
Mary was a great one for rememberin’ old toimes — and she was 
coming back to spend the next night by the corpse of her old 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


341 

friend. Meanwhile she had sent two of the girls “to be useful 
if they could.” Nellie and Kathryn — Auntie’s “name-gir’rl” — 
were there, and, in the midst of her downcastness and sadness, 
Miss McGee felt interested to see these two nieces of hers. 
Nellie — although she never came for Auntie on her way to 
church — still remained Auntie’s favorite amongst Mary’s chil- 
dren; and Kathryn, another of the nieces who never came for 
Auntie, she also liked to see, because curiosity sometimes seized 
her as to the way her namesake was turnin’ out. Nellie was a 
dark, clever-looking girl. She was perfectly ready to talk to 
the Auntie she looked so like. Yes, she was getting on fine with 
her teaching. Sure. The Nuns were pleased. She was to get 
a larger class next year and a rise. Perhaps she’d end by going 
to the States and seeing what she could make of it there. “Yer 
Pa’a won’t loike that, Nellie,” Miss McGee said. She had 
every sympathy with Nellie. She would have felt just like that 
herself in her own youth — had she had Nellie’s chances. “I 
guess Dad’ll get over ut,” Nellie had said to that with a per- 
fectly good-humored laugh — she alluded to Tim Garry as “Dad” 
not “Pa’a” any more — “I have me career to think of, Auntie, 
eh.” Nellie seemed to have not the slightest thought of marriage 
as a career. There was no look of a “bo’oy” in her eyes. She 
had that entirely straight unsexual glance that has become so 
common now in the eyes of girls. Her mind was taken up with 
getting on, with making money and carving out “a career” 
for herself. She simply had no time to think of matrimony, 
or love, or “tearin’ around with the fellas.” Auntie Katie 
was destined to meet “Woman” for the first time — really, for 
the Lady did not quite embody the part — in the person of her 
own little niece, Nellie Garry. How queer! 

Katie — Kathryn — Aunt Katie’s name-gir-rl — was, alas, just a 
nonentity. She didn’t interest Miss McGee at all. “Sure,” 
she said to herself, “ain’t ut me luck a’alroight she should ’a’ 
been named fer me. A little lame-headed duck that can’t 
spell quack!” She turned away from Katie Garry’s smiling 
face. It irritated her. “Why couldn’t ut have been Nellie 
they named fer me,” she said to herself. It seemed to her 
that Nellie was the One who would realize the ambitious 
side of herself. The thought passed through her mind, “Why 
shouldn’t I cut Polly an’ Belle out of me will and give ut all 
to Nellie, eh I” — and she felt a thrill of pride that she had 
something to give that would help in the carving out of this 
career that should have been her own. 


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OUR LITTLE LIFE 


And Willie Bardwell was there, the blind brother of Tully. 
His presence, so intimately connected with the long-dead past, 
seemed to clutch at something in her heart. “Sure an’ it’s 
never Kitty McGee,” Willie Bardwell said. “Why, Kitty, me 
dear, ’tis years an’ years since I’ve saw ye.” He spoke of 
seeing as if he hadn’t gone blind. Miss McGee had often 
seen him at church, being led in by his eldest girl, who had 
devoted herself to Pa’a: but she had never spoken to him 
since the years long ago when she and Tully had been lovers 
together. She could feel, as she fixed her own blue-black 
eyes on Willie’s sightless ones, the pressure of Tully’s lips on 
her own. He was the one man she had kissed like that — 
back again — passionately. It seemed to have left something in 
her — as if a seed had been planted that had never had strength 
to grow up but had remained, just alive, somewhere in the 
depths of her. 

“Willie,” she said. She felt herself once more the old Kitty 
McGee. Not the staid elderly Aunt to the two big girls beside 
her — not the old woman Auntie must appear in their eyes — 
but the young light-footed thing that Tully had wanted — 
wanted with all the force of his passionate body. Miss McGee 
felt at the moment all the fires of youth rush through her 
own body — all the old insistent longing, the desire for con- 
tact, to touch Tully. She went forward to Willie: and she 
was conscious, just for the second, of a feeling of thankfulness, 
a feeling of gratitude, profound and terrible, that he was blind, 
that he could not see the wreck of the old Kitty McGee that 
his brother had desired. 

Willie Bardwell passed his hands lightly over her features 
and down gently over her shoulders to her waist. There was 
some inexplicable mysterious family touch that he had in com- 
mon with his brother’s far more ardent fingers: Miss McGee 
felt as if Tully’s hands were on her once more. She felt once 
again that furious rebellion that had risen up in her at her 
mother’s prohibition against her marriage. She shut her eyes 
to heighten the illusion. It was Tully touching her. At that 
moment Robert was blotted out as if he had never existed. 
Katie McGee was back in the past. 

“It’s the same old Kitty McGee,” Willie said, with his 
soft smile. Blindness had produced in him the taming effect 
it usually produces. He was kindly and gentle and soft and 
quite cheerful. He sat down by Katie, and began to tell 
her about his work — he was a tuner of pianos and went about 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


343 

Regalia as if it were the quiet Regalia of the old days — 
standing now and again at a crossing till some kindly passer-by 
would give him an arm to the other side. And then he began 
to ask Katie about her own work. And their talk drifted 
back to the old times, to Mrs. McGee and Old Nancy of 
the jig, to Mrs. Weltman that had been Dolly McSwayne 
in the days when Willie knew her; to poor Mrs. Morphy as she 
had been then, “a fine clear-footed gir’rl she was,” Willie said: 
and lastly to Tully. 

Tully was in the States. He wrote rarely. He had no 
children — the widow he had married was far older than him- 
self. He was a widower now. The woman had died — not 
long ago . . . 

Miss McGee’s heart gave a bound. It was not that she ex- 
pected anything of Tully. “That,” as she called it, was dead, 
as dead as Mrs. Morphy in her coffin; and deader. She 
expected nothing of Tully. She didn’t even want to see him 
again. But as these things lie waiting in a woman’s heart 
all a life long, so they spring up at attention when news 
comes. Tully was a widower, free again. “He’ll be man-yin’ 
someone that’s nearer his own,” Miss McGee said out loud. 
She could say it quite quietly. “Sure, Kitty, ’tis you should 
’a’ been marryin’ um yerself long ago,” Willie said affection- 
ately. 

The old love turned again in Miss McGee’s heart. Love, 
after all, is the life of a woman. How often had Tully 
thought of her all these long, for the most part barren, years? 
He had had his work. And his drink. He had his wife’s 
money now. There isn’t room for more than that in a man’s 
heart. But women always keep room for love. How was Nellie 
going to manage about that with her downright conceptions of 
life? Her decisive energy with which she was going to attack 
life — like a man — carve out a career for herself “whether Dad 
liked ut or not” — how would it serve her in the place of love? 
A pang for Nellie shot across Miss McGee. How would she — 
this favorite niece — fare in this mess of a life . . . ? 

When Miss McGee left the Finns’ house in the morning, she 
felt somehow soothed. She felt not only as if she had passed the 
night with all that was left of Mrs. Morphy, but as if, by her 
talk with Willie, she had resurrected into flickering momentary 
life, all the ghosts of the past. She felt as if her mother had 
been there, spending the night with her beside the coffin; as 
if Danny Finn’s mother, Old Nancy of the light foot, had 


344 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


tripped across the room. Miss McGee felt as if Willie Bard- 
well’s good wife and his steady well-doing family were non- 
existent; as if he were once more the young, good, rather stupid, 
steady boy he had been years ago — “the pussy-cat” — the 
“Sissy” — of a man that she had half-liked and half-despised 
in the days long ago. She felt as if Tim O’Donough, the 
letter-carrier, had resurrected and had come to sit beside the 
coffin for a space; as if Tim O’Donough’s landlady, old 
Mrs. Molloy, with her capable face and her spacious body, had 
been there too; as if Mary Garry with her old sweet madonna 
girl-face had been sitting close by her — and as if Tully had 
been there loading down the air with his passionate pro- 
testations. 

As Miss McGee took the road for home, just to have a 
hurried wash and another cup of tea (Nonnie had been in- 
sistent with her hospitable offers and had supplied several 
already) before she set off for another day at Wellston Road, 
she felt that, even if Mrs. Barclay were as patriotic — as mad- 
English, was how Miss McGee put it — as she had been yes- 
terday, she wouldn’t mind it. She felt as if she were pro- 
tected by numberless kind ghosts of the past, against every- 
thing evil. (Mrs. Barclay’s patriotism was evil to Miss Mc- 
Gee.) “Sure thing,” she said to herself, “they’re waitin’ fer 
me somewhere.” She was thinking of those dead to her in the 
flesh — not of Tully, dead in the spirit, yet warm and living 
somewhere in the States. “They’re there, I guess,” she said, 
“waitin’ fer Kitty.” And she felt a sense of protection await- 
ing her in the other world; she felt a certainty that all those 
who had gone before were waiting for her there. “ ’Tis the 
grand thing a’alroight,” she said to herself, “to be sure they’ll 
be welcomin’ me home. Home,” she kept saying to herself. 
“Home. Home.” And as she passed into Penelope’s Build- 
ings the mess that this world is seemed less bitter than it had 
seemed to her before she spent the night beside her old friend. 
The soft calm sight of the coffin with the dead Mrs. IVforphy 
majestically asleep inside it rose before her. She saw the 
calm lips, the quiet eyelids, the look of aloofness — and repose 
that liad come over the face. 

“Sure, she’s waitin’ too now,” Miss McGee said. And it 
seemed to her that it would not be hard when the time came 
to give up her hold on this world, to slacken gently, feel 
herself being lowered bit by bit — or carried up, perhaps, to be 
floating at last in some unknown empyrean. . . . 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


345 

But once she had passed the doorway of the Buildings she 
came back with a start to the present. Penelope’s Buildings, 
Mrs. Savourin, the bad man in Mrs. Morphy’s old flat across 
the court, the bunch of tarts just across the passage-way from 
her, Robert — all these things tightened round her once more 
and asserted their presence in the very beats of her pulse. “I’m 
not through with ut yet,” she said to herself with a sigh. 
“I’m in the thick of ut, God help me.” The friendly ghosts 
seemed to part from her, gently let go their hold on her, float 
away silently and imperceptibly into those unseen places where 
we can no longer commune with them. Miss McGee, as she 
climbed the dirty gray stairs of the Buildings, felt once more 
alone. She felt very much alone. Her soul turned to Robert — 
and clung to him. 

“I’ll have to hurry, I guess,” she said to herself, once more, 
glancing at her dollar clock. “I’ll be all behoind toime at Mrs. 
Barclay’s this toime too, eh? My, I’ll have to hurry-rush 
a’alroight. I guess I’d best take the car-r. . . .” 

And she bustled about, stiff a little after her sleepless night, 
and set things in train for the coming unavoidable day. 


CHAPTER XLVI 

T HERE was little time for anyone to mourn Mrs. Morphy; 
for in October the Spanish Influenza took hold of Regalia, 
so that no one could think of anything else. The in- 
fluenza took hold — with a strangling sort of hold that squeezed 
the life out of the city. Regalia was not worse than other 
cities, of course: it was not so bad as some. But it was bad 
enough. The colds — the coughing and sneezing of September — 
turned by microscopic degrees into the influenza of October 
and then the plague went round invisibly, like a thief in 
the night, and laid its microbe on its victim; and if it laid 
it on hard — that victim died. It was little Bellerose, the letter- 
man, who brought the phantom of the new disease home as 
an effective truth to Penelope’s Buildings. One day he was 
there delivering letters as usual : and two days later he was dead, 
leaving behind him a widow and five children and a sixth child 
to come. A new letterman began to climb the stairs of the 
Buildings; and I don’t know that anything could have so 
driven the fact of dire change into the Penelopians. Bellerose 
had been there amongst them for sixteen years. Day after 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


346 

day his friendly face had come up their stairs and gone down 
again: and his friendly French-Canadian voice, with its full- 
ness of English-Canadian slang, had greeted them. “Say, ain’t 
this the day fer you?” he would say, handing out a letter to 
some Penelopian who was not in the habit of getting letters. 
“I feel glad. Ain’t you the bienheureux, le smart-y, eh!” And 
he would go further on his rounds, turning his head over his 
shoulder and smiling in his friendly way. When he spoke 
French, he was transformed. Something old and refined and 
courteous seemed to come into his voice and bearing. He had 
two selves — one self for each language that he spoke; to the 
Penelopians it had mostly been the slangy English Bellerose 
that had spoken: but in either language he was a friendly 
soul, doing his duty in a not-too-exquisite world, and getting 
small thanks for it from anyone. And now he was dead. 

“Say will you tell me,” said one Penelopian to another. 
“You heard, eh, that young Bellerose there is dead. Well, 
say, ef that ain’t the limmutt, eh. This flu is goin’ to be 
some devul, I guess. An’ Bellerose’s girl there with five kids 
an’ another kiddie cornin’. Ain’t ut too bad . . . ?” The Pene- 
lopians felt in their letter-man the proprietary interest we 
all feel in our letter-men, and they mourned Bellerose — for a 
few hours — with strength and sincerity. There was even a dim 
suggestion and a good deal of talk of a “collection” being taken 
up, five cents apiece all around — “See here! what ut’d do fer 
Bellerose’s gir’rl there!” — but like many another philanthropic 
scheme it ended with the gush of sentiment that induced it. 
Nothing was done for Bellerose or for Bellerose’s widow, or 
for the five kids, or for the sixth kiddie that was coming. 
They just did as they could — and very badly it was — without 
any help: and in a couple of days the new letter-man was 
accepted by all. “You cornin’ on, eh, ’stead of that Bellerose 
there?” “Yes, Madam.” “I guess you miss um a’alroight 
down at the station there, eh?” “Yes, Madam. He was a 
funny fella. He kep’ us all goin’, I tell you, with his la’afin’ 
an’ fun.” Such was Bellerose’s epitaph. And he was for- 
gotten. 

After his death — instantly after it — the influenza seemed to 
dash over Penelope’s Buildings like an ever-advancing wave 
of misfortune. The bad man in Mrs. Morphy’s old flat across 
the court was stricken, and forthwith his name became blessed. 
Mrs. Savourin went in to him with stray glasses of wine, Miss 
McGee went down and made his bed and cleaned his room: 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


347 

there wasn’t a woman in Penelope’s Buildings that wouldn’t 
have given her right hand for him . . . while he was ilk When 
he got better (as bad people do) he relapsed into his pristine 
condition of neglect and not one of the Penelopians would 
so much as look at him if they met him on the stair. Then 
two chorus-girls — wreckage from an opera company that had 
come to Regalia and been hurriedly dispersed — took the plague. 
They took it in an empty flat, “rented” from Mrs. Savourin, 
where they were camping out. To them Miss McGee went 
down with an extra mattress that she had, and some blankets 
she could ill spare, with little messes of farina and sago and 
glasses of malted milk that she oughtn’t to have afforded them 
out of her money-less condition. “I guess them gir’rls there is 
punk a’alroight,” she observed to Robert, “but ye can’t let ’em 
die.” Robert — he had begun scrimping and saving out of his 
scanty earnings so that, in time, he might buy himself out of 
the Market — provided money wherewith they might live a 
little longer if Fate would allow them to do so: and Miss 
McGee went out to Semple’s cut-rate drug-store — she had to 
go a long way down O’Neil Street now that “The Trefusian” had 
displaced Semple’s old place of business— and she laid out the 
money to the very best of her ability and came back into the 
empty flat and tended the girls as if she had been their mother. 
Then Mrs. Savourin collapsed — and Miss McGee tended her. 
Katie was a good nurse. She had kindly and capable hands, she 
had had experience in nursing her own mother and the little 
Garrys in their childish illnesses : and, beyond any mere experi- 
ence, she had what, above all other things, constitutes the 
Nurse. She had the kindly and sympathetic heart that, quite 
instinctively and without taking thought, cannot see another in 
pain without beating faster. By the time October started Miss 
McGee was going the rounds of her patients before she set off 
in the morning and after she came home at night: when 
she went to bed she only half undressed: and over the end of 
her bed she hung her warm old flannel kimono, and beside that 
she put that other relic of the past, the big coat in which she 
slipped over to her morning masses in the church. 

Thus clad, thrice in the night-time she made her rounds. She 
gave the medicine, she heated little messes over the spirit-lamp 
she carried with her, she turned the pillows under the pa- 
tients’ heads, she raised the poor sick stricken creatures in her 
arms and comforted them. During these night-rounds it hardly 
seemed to be Miss McGee who was going from one flat to an- 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


348 

other, noiselessly, in the soft felt slippers she wore in the 
house. It seemed to be somthing made of kindness and mercy, 
something that, highly-strung and sensitive as it was, seemed 
for the moment only to be sensitive and highly-strung for 
others. Something compact of sympathy, something made of 
kindness, the one seed of perfection in our poor humanity that 
some day may blossom into the beauty of great unself -conscious 
love. . . . 

It was impossible to move any of the sufferers into hos- 
pitals: the hospitals in Regalia filled up, during the wave of 
the influenza, as if by magic, and soon there was room for no 
fresh case. Doctors and nurses were struck down, and amateurs, 
unconnected with the hospital staffs, had to fill their places. 
Where the plague struck, there the victim had to lie. In some 
houses, where Miss McGees were not, the victims were found 
dead — quite casually. In the lumber-camps far out in the 
Canadian country, whole batches of men were found lying dead 
. . . as if they had been struck, as in the old fairy tales, with 
some evil enchantment. Only here there was no cure. 

It began to seem to Miss McGee, as October went on, that 
everyone she knew was going; that her world, as she had known 
it, was coming to an end. The wave each day seemed to sweep 
further in, and sweep out of being another of her landmarks: 
even the spray of the wave, if one may put it so, seemed to wash 
out distant things that had indeed not touched her life but 
that she had always comfortingly known were there. Willie 
Bardwell’s faithful daughter went, and he was left without an 
arm to lead him into his place at church. “Ed’s” brother went — 
in a couple of days like Bellerose; and then Ed himself was 
taken ill, and for a spell it seemed as if Ag’s wedding-clothes 
might not be necessary at all. But Ed pulled through. His 
microbe was not one of those that turn you livid and purple from 
the first and sweep you off the face of the earth as the broom 
sweeps the particle of dust off the floor. After a week Ed 
rallied. Ag’s wedding-clothes were safe — and Miss McGee 
breathed again. There was no doubt of it. Laugh as she might 
at the Garry’s pretensions; decry her sister as she would; the 
Garry interests were her interests. When she was young, long 
ago, she had been able to push the Garrys and Garryton aside, 
immerse herself in her own interests, bury herself in herself, 
as it were, independent of family: but as life went on, the same 
thing happened to Miss McGee that happens to the rest of 
the world. Family asserted itself. The people who were dead 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


349 

asserted their share in her. She could throw off her family 
preoccupations as little as any of us can — and therefore the 
sickness of “Ed” became the sickness of one of her own. She 
worried over his danger, and when he “had his crisis” and 
turned the corner that leads back to life, she felt as great a throb 
of thankfulness as if he had been her own sister’s son: and yet 
all the time she knew that Ag’s marriage meant nothing to 
her. Ag would “better herself” by marrying Ed. It was even 
within the bounds of possibility that she might keep a ly- 
mousine in the distant future. Ed was a “go-er.” “Auntie” 
would become less than nothing to the Ag Furlong that would 
be. Miss McGee knew all this. It made no difference. Ag — 
she didn’t care for her personally — was bone of the McGee bone 
and blood of the McGee blood, and as such she was a part of 
Katie McGee. Miss McGee prayed for Ed’s recovery pas- 
sionately, imploringly, constantly. His illness was her last 
thought at night all the time it lasted, and her first thought 
in the morning. She carried it round with her in her night- 
watches by the sick. She sickened at heart herself as she 
thought of his death. And when he was pronounced “on the 
turn” it was Miss McGee’s heart that gave one great bound 
of thankfulness. Ag was on the way to her ly-mousine once 
more. 

It was just then that Nonnie Finn went with her unborn 
babe in her womb; and Danny was left with the little crowd of 
souls that he and Nonnie had summoned to this earth, to 
battle as he could. Nonnie’s troubles were over — and the 
troubles of the child she bore within her were never to begin. 
Miss McGee felt that with this death of Nonnie, another link 
with life was snapped. Nonnie meant the continuation of old 
Mrs. Morphy to Miss McGee — she meant that the past was not 
blotted wholly out in Miss McGee’s prospect of the world. 
“Sure,” Katie McGee said to herself when the news came to 
her at Mrs. Barclay’s over the telephone wires, “when will 
They be takin’ me? I’m willin’ to go. . . .” 

When the theaters and the movies and the schools and the 
churches were all “shut down” by order of the Municipality, 
then Mrs. Glassridge saw fit to “git out.” She gathered to- 
gether her clothes and her maid and everything that was com- 
pact of Mr. Glassridge’s money and she took to herself the 
wing? of a dove and fled to a place where she hoped the in- 
fluenza was not. With her she took the nine dollars and car- 
fares that should have been Miss McGee’s for the annual 


350 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


week of “fall work.” “She’ll save her skin aloive will she,” 
said Miss McGee to Robert, apropos of this Flight to the 
South. “She ain’t no good.” “No good ” Miss McGee went 
on after a pause, with the pleasure we all feel in making 
similar observations, “an’ what did I always say? Punk. 
That’s what she is. She’d best’ve stayed roight there in the 
Barber’s Shop an’ fixed up nails. ’Tis a’all she’s good fer.” 
Miss McGee here made a long speaking pause. “I guess the 
fir’rst Mrs. Glassridge there wouldn’t have acted so,” she re- 
marked. “I’d loike to have saw her.” There was another 
speaking pause. “Skippin’ out! Sendin’ awf S. O. S. ca’alls!” 
Miss McGee then remarked, “Pah!” 

The subject was complete — for Miss McGee. Through the 
hole at the bottom of the completed subject Mrs. Glassridge 
the second dropped. Katie McGee mentioned her no more. 

Then Mr. Barclay went. Not to the South, poor man, to 
escape the plague, but to a much further land which is in- 
visible to our mortal eyes. He went West. One day he had 
come home from what the Barclay household called his “awfus” 
with that dim heliotrope tint on his face that spells death. 
He had taken to his bed quite uncomplainingly — old Mr. 
Barclay had never been one of the complaining kind — and 
there, tended by Mrs. Barclay and Katie, his daughter, and 
Jennet, his maid, he had stayed uncomplainingly until he died. 
He had been delirious awhile and talked of his boyhood and 
of a fight he had had then — a hot bloody fight it seemed to have 
been, poor peaceable old man — and again his thoughts would 
turn to the Office, and he would think he was dictating to his 
stenographer, Miss Atkins, that came sometimes to the Barclays 
for Sunday dinner: and he would classify things in a queer 
ordered kind of delirium, send off letters to this Firm and that 
Firm, address the stenographer by name. “Have them letters 
fixed so they go out by the mail, Miss Atkins, eh.” And some- 
times he would make a move to get up from his bed and go 
down to that Office where the reality of his life had been: and 
he would expostulate a little with his wife and daughter and 
Jennet — a Nurse they could get for neither love nor money — 
when they made him lie down again. “Lie down, master,” 
Jennet would say — she kept the good old Scotch ways, “lie 
down, master. Jennet Caulfield’ll be goin’ for ye” — and he 
would lie down. Mr. Barclay always had done what Mrs. 
Barclay and Katie and, in a minor degree, what Jennet had 
asked him to do. After five days of this death-in-life, he had 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


351 

died. He hadn’t died any more romantically or adventurously 
or excitingly than Mrs. Morphy had died. He had just died. 
And Mrs. Barclay, with her thoughts turned to crape and 
“weepers,” was a widow. 

There were difficulties about the funeral. Ceremonies were 
at a discount. People — and highly respectable people — were 
going down into the grave with their hair uncurled and their 
nails unmanicured, they were dropping into the grave any- 
way — carried there on a dray, in one of a pile of hastily-made 
coffins. Lights burned in the undertakers’ offices all night 
long, and the hearses and the fill-in wagons went in and out in 
a continuous stream from day-break to dark. . . . 

Mr. Barclay was put away into the grave and Wellston 
Road and the Awfus down-town knew him no more. It seemed 
queer somehow that Mr. Barclay was dead. It seemed unsuit- 
able in a way that anything so romantic as death should have 
descended on him and taken him away. Mr. Barclay’s place 
seemed inevitably to be in the Wellston Road, at the top of his 
mahogany dinner table with its Union Jack flying in the golden 
vayse, and the chair at the top of the table seemed desolate 
without Mr. Barclay’s heavy seat on it, and even the Union Jack 
looked out-of-place, now that his trimmed white beard was 
gone. Miss McGee felt, the first time she came to Wellston 
Road after Mr. Barclay had gone out of it, that the world 
was altered. It was emptier — for her — without Mr. Barclay’s 
two hundred pounds of flesh ; and she couldn’t sit down to table 
without the echo in her ears of his old kind voice, “Take a bit 
more , Miss McGee!” It was impossible to think of Mr. Barclay 
except as the possessor of that kind, slightly-hoarse voice with 
its hospitable invitation. How would he be — how could he be — 
as a disembodied spirit, he for whom the world had been a 
dinner-table and a business office and a comfortable bed . . . ? 

“He was a good husband to me,” Mrs. Barclay kept saying. 
“We never had words betwixt us the forty-three years we was 
man and wife. The night Mr. Barclay died, Miss McGee, he 
felt about me the same way he done” (Mrs. Barclay’s grammar 
was subject to lapses) “the day he got me.” It was true. . It 
was perfectly true. There had been no question of passion 
between the Barclays. They had been married people from the 
first — good married people, never a word between them (they 
were not even near enough for desperate quarrels) and every- 
thing, yes, down to the most intimate act, done in a right- 
minded, decorous, hidden manner. Katie Barclay had come 


352 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


into the world without the slightest undue exposure of any- 
thing at all: and now it was over, and Mrs. Barclay had to be 
respectable alone. 

Once Mr. Barclay had been put away, as Miss McGee said, 
Mrs. Barclay’s thoughts turned definitely to crape, and Miss 
McGee’s days of work were assured. She came in the morning, 
after tending each one of her patients to the best of her ability, 
to Wellston Road, and there she sat all day long “making 
mourning” for the Head of the House who was gone. Where 
was he gone? Had he departed into some far country where it 
was impossible to reach him any more ? Or was he, released in 
some mysterious way of his two hundred pounds of flesh, 
amongst them as they sat sewing “mourning” for him, and pre- 
siding over them as they sat at meat? Miss McGee, sewing 
crape on every possible garment, wondered about these things, 
as she had wondered about Mrs. Morphy, and as she wondered 
about Nonnie’s unborn child. Where do the unborn children 
go? Do they form eternally a part of the mother who con- 
ceived them ? Do they never have an entity of their own . . . 
does everything join, form at last a great indissoluble union? 
Do individuals cease to exist when they leave this earth, or do 
they exist as heightened individualities, watching eagerly over 
us who are left, sorrowing in our sorrow, happy in our joy, 
stretching forth invisible helpful hands that we might touch 
if we only would . . . ? 

As Miss McGee sat sewing, these were the things she thought 
about. These, and the influenza. She was not afraid for 
herself. Not in the least. Things had come to that pass with 
her that she would have been glad to go. But, as she sat at the 
Wellston Road window and watched the funerals go by in 
one long unending procession (Wellston Road was on the way 
to Regalia’s cemetery; it was, in Mrs. Barclay’s estimation, 
an added item of respectability), sometimes a fear for Robert 
snatched at her heart. What if Robert should go? What 
if the influenza should set its microbe on him, drive it in, 
poison his being, kill it — make of him the unknown mysterious 
thing that Nonnie and Mr. Barclay had become? Miss McGee 
felt that she couldn’t lose Robert. Unknown to herself, by 
imperceptible degrees, Robert had become life of her life; she 
held him enshrined in her inmost heart. She was now not 
so much in love with him — she had been that at one time — as 
something that deeply loved him. With the recognition of 
her age had come a different kind of love for him, a love in 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 353 

which passion had no share. Miss McGee, sitting sewing, hour 
after hour, at the black crape garments that were to mark Mr. 
Barclay’s secession from the world, loved Robert as a sister loves 
a brother, as a mother loves a son, as an old wife loves the pas- 
sionate lover of her youth. To Miss McGee, Robert was the 
epitome of her life. He represented to her all the things she 
had always longed for and had never been able to attain. He 
was the elegant education to which her intellect had always 
vainly reached forth, walking incarnate. He was her ideal of 
refinement. His speech, his accent, his choice of words, went 
to her pride straight — and satisfied it. And over and above 
these things, over and above the fact too that his appearance 
and his flesh satisfied her, there was that mysterious thing 
that we can none of us explain. To Miss McGee, Robert’s 
presence was a happiness. He had only to come into the 
room, she had only to think that two stories above her he was 
ensconced in his own little flat, to feel that the world was 
worth while, and that life was beautiful. Who has succeeded 
in defining love? No one. Miss McGee loved Robert Fulton, 
and the thought that this death that was round about Regalia, 
enveloping it, emptying it, might one day lay its finger on 
Robert and say, “You are mine,” terrified her. A shiver 
ran through her as she thought that Robert might be taken from 
her. Snatched from her — lifted up by this mighty unseen power 
and taken clean out of her sight, as Mr. Barclay had been 
taken away from his awfus and out of his chair at the mahogany 
dinner-table. One bit of consolation alone remained to Miss 
McGee — and it was a small illogical unsatisfying bit of con- 
solation. Yet she- clung to it. She had read in one of those 
gems of scientific instruction that are flung at us by the evening 
papers of all our various nationalities, that the influenza microbe 
is the smallest microbe ever known. “Sure,” said Miss McGee 
to herself, and she said it to herself over and over and over 
again, “ef it’s that sma’all, ut’ll wear utself out. Ut’ll be 
wore all up, I guess, before it gits along to um.” (She meant 
Robert Fulton.) And, one day, taking heart of grace, she 
confided to Miss Barclay, who was sitting beside her, “helping 
on the mourning,” this small piece of scientific consolation. “I 
guess ’twas big ’nough to kill Pappa a’alroight,” Miss Barclay 
remarked. And this was all she remarked. The scientific 
piece of comfort fell on barren soil and did not sprout at 
all. It had never struck Miss McGee this way somehow, and 
she was a good deal taken aback. “Sure an’ ut did kill Mr. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


354 

Barclay, eh,” she said to herself. And Nonnie and Ed’s brother 
and one of the chorus-girls (who had died in her arms) and 
little Bellerose, and all the lists of dead that Mrs. Barclay 
read aloud each day in the obituary notices of the newspapers 
came into her mind. It was at that moment that it struck 
Miss McGee that there is a great gulf fixed between pieces of 
information and the application of those pieces of information 
to actual fact. “I guess ’twas big ’nough to kill Pappa” was 
all that Miss Barclay, a good-natured girl of pretty nearly 
forty years old now, said. But it was enough. Miss McGee’s 
scientific consolation dropped through the bottom with Mrs. 
Glassridge the Second and a lot of other things, and from that 
day forth Miss McGee worried uninterruptedly about Robert. 
She learned day by day that fear that is the greatest fear of all 
— greater to a woman than the fear of the Lord: the fear for 
those one loves better than oneself. A gray look came gradually 
over her face. When she got home in the evenings she would 
watch Robert’s face as if she wished to see through it to where 
the smallest microbe in the world was perhaps just taking its 
seat in his brain. She would look intently at him, and look, 
and look; and however long she looked she would never feel 
satisfied. 

“You a’alroight, eh?” she would say, in that intensely matter- 
of-fact tone by which we mask our secret terrors and our bit- 
terest anxieties. 

“Yes, of- course,” Robert would reply in a slightly irritated 
tone. “Why shouldn’t I be all right?” 

And he would go on eating the supper Miss McGee had 
somehow found time to prepare. As long as he was in her 
sight Miss McGee could bear it. It was as soon as he went 
out of her sight that it was unbearable. It became frankly 
unendurable to her, as the influenza epidemic went on, to sit 
through the interminable days at the Barclays, sewing crape on 
to every Mrs. Barclay garment . . . even to chemises, if it 
were permissible to think of Mrs. Barclay and a chemise. It 
was almost impossible, and yet she did it. “It’ll be a’flZroight,” 
she kept assuring herself. “He’ll git through. They’ll never 
touch um — one sure thing they won’t.” Yet there was sus- 
picion at the back of her mind. This world is such a deceitful 
disappointing kind of a place and such terrible inexplicable 
things happen in it ! Miss McGee longed to throw down Mrs. 
Barclay’s murky garments and fly out at the respectable front 
door just as she was — hatless and coatless — fly to the Arundel 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


355 

Market, and see with her own eyes that Robert was still 
safe. It seemed to her cruel that she was shut away from 
him — that nothing was free to roam about as it would but 
the fateful microbe that might set its claws on him and kill 
him — and take him from her. “What’ll I do” she kept saying 
to herself, “if . . . ?” She never finished the sentence. But 
when she said that, the air all round her seemed pressed 
down with terror. There were times when the old fighting 
McGee spirit went utterly out of her — and she felt afraid. 


CHAPTER XLVII 

I T is impossible to say what made Robert Fulton decide to 
write the final section of the Canada Book in the last de- 
pressing weeks of October ; but he did so decide : and, having 
decided, he sat down and did it. No one can say exactly, I 
suppose, what the impulse is that sets the literary spring loose. 
A writer will pass week after week thinking he is going to 
write, hoping he is going to write, deploring the fact that 
lie can’t write; and then one morning, without rhyme or reason, 
he gets up out of bed — and he does write. Robert Fulton got up 
out of bed one day in the rapidly-darkening mornings of very 
late October, and he said to himself, “I’ll finish that Canada 
Book.” He felt the ideas for it, that had been all summer 
long hazily floating about in his brain as separate particles, 
cohere inside of him. Quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he 
knew what he was going to say. Whole sentences shaped 
themselves in his mind as he dressed. He only wished that such 
a place as the Arundel Market did not exist, and that he 
could sit down forthwith and, with his slender porcupine-quill 
pen balanced at just the right angle, transfer — lift carefully 
out of his brain, as it were — those delicately-poised sentences, 
those pleasantly-balanced paragraphs. He said to himself as 
he ran down-stairs, “Why can’t I just sit down and finish it 
off? This evening I shall have forgotten all I meant to 
say ...” 

But he hadn’t forgotten. When the evening came he found 
himself as keen as ever; and, seated at his little deal table, he 
found the sentences that had shaped themselves in his brain 
reeling off it and on to the paper without the slightest trouble 
to himself in making them do it. The ease perhaps with 
which he wrote down what he had to say was owing to the long 


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356 

rest he had given his gray matter. He had, except for one 
or two of the slightest little things he had jotted down from 
time to time since seeing Eileen Martyn, shifted his mind 
completely off the Canada Book. He hadn’t consciously con- 
sidered it at all. And yet how could his brain present him, 
as it was doing in the late October days, with just what he 
wanted to say? He sat, smiling a little now and again — as 
he had done on that evening that now seemed so long ago, 
when he had sat writing the first pages of his book! — and 
between-whiles very intent, getting down sentence after sentence. 
And as he wrote he saw that it was good. He had never 
written so naturally before. He had never seemed so near 
to life. Some things that he had to say moved him. Some 
diverted him a little. As he wrote, Canada shaped itself before 
him as it might have been — such a fine big new ingenuous coun- 
try, giving lessons to the older, more seasoned, tired countries 
how to grow. The deformed Canada that he saw daily before 
him vanished from his eyes. He saw, so clearly, what it 
might have been — as he wrote: and when he raised his eyes 
for a second from what he was writing he saw what actually 
was the Canada he knew — the paper and the plaster peeling off 
the squalid walls of his poor room, and rain coming dripping in 
at the broken pane that he had never had money to mend. 

Miss McGee approved of his writing once more. “Sure,” 
she said to herself, “ut’ll do um good, the bo’oy.” And the 
worry, the tense tight strings of worry that were strung through 
her head, slacked a little and let her rest a moment. She 
set the writing-fit, as she called it, down to the fact that it 
was almost time for the Lady to be back. (Miss McGee had 
telephoned and found Miss Martyn back at her flat in Septem- 
ber, but it was only to hear from her that she was “off” again 
immediately on another business trip. And since then there had 
been silence in response to all telephone calls to Frejus Man- 
sions from Wellston Road.) But Miss McGee was wrong. 
Though the Lady’s coming-back was possibly an incentive to 
Robert to finish what he was about, it wasn’t all the reason 
for his setting to work. There was also alert in him that half- 
conscious desire we have in times of trouble, to be active; to 
be doing something, to take off our minds, as we say, from 
the sorrow round about us. Regalia in the time of the Spanish 
Influenza was a melancholy town. It was full of emptiness 
and dreariness and fearful people, going about here and there 
in the emptiness, watching themselves closely to see if the 


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357 

microbe had got hold of them yet. At the Arundel Market the 
salesmen fell off one by one, and the remaining salesmen did 
the work of the absentees as best they could. Some of the 
salesmen came back, white and thin and weak; and some 
went the way of Nonnie Finn and Mr. Barclay. The returned 
man, with the badge of service on his white linen lapel, went 
the way of all flesh. He who had escaped shell and bomb 
and bayonet and gas succumbed to the smallest microbe in 
the world. It was big enough to kill him as well as Pappa 
Barclay. Robert felt a pang as he thought of the faint 
jealousy that the badge used to stir in him. . . . 

It was not that Robert was afraid of catching the trouble, as 
Miss McGee put it. He wasn’t in the slightest degree afraid, 
and anyhow, he was still too young to mind dying much. He 
simply wanted to shelter himself from the disagreeables round 
him; and then Regalia at the best bored him: and to seek an 
outlet from his boredom and from the surrounding influenza 
talk — he wrote. There was another thing that may have helped 
to let loose the spring; a beautiful artistic thing that happened 
in Regalia and turned in a flash of a moment a bustling twen- 
tieth-century commercial city into an orderly fifteenth-century 
picture town — a town that seemed in the midst of the electric 
cars and the overhead telephone wires, almost too dignified to 
be real. The last thing that had been closed in Regalia by 
municipal order was the stronghold of the Catholic 
Churches. And it was on the first Sunday when the Catholic 
Regalians were shut out from these securest refuges of theirs 
that Robert, standing by the side of a kneeling Miss McGee, 
stood on the side-walk of Drayton Place, watching a motor- 
car come slowly along with, inside it, a priest who held high 
the monstrance that bore the Blessed Sacrament. As Robert 
smelled the heavy hypnotic odor of the incense that the acolyte 
behind the priest swung out into the dank October air — for the 
long wet days were lasting out; as he watched the kneeling 
figures of the Regalians; as he turned his eyes to the Nuns 
of the Sacred Heart prostrate in a dark row in front of the 
gray convent on the upper side of O’Neil Street; as he stood 
there, on the concrete side-walk, acutely conscious of Stempel 
Street and the Market there, the North-Eastern Lunch Counter 
round the corner — and these side-walks as far as he could see 
them lined with bent-headed, kneeling figures— he wondered 
if he were dreaming. This was Canada. It was Regalia, 
Canada’s port. Here came the waifs and strays of the older 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


358 

lands to seek a new, a practical, a money-making life. That 
was a motor-car coming along, sure enough : but what kind of 
a motor-car? It was draped with white. Supplicatory prayers 
were fastened to its sides. Standing in the body of the car 
was a priest that might have come straight out of the time 
where Robert Fulton often had longed to be — he held his 
arms high, behind him a boy swung out fragrance. Instinc- 
tively Robert turned his eyes, past the Convent of the Sacred 
Heart to see if Savonarola were not hurrying to the spot — and 
what he saw was the tangled line of the telephone wire zig- 
zagging across the net-work of the electric car-line service. He 
looked along the bowed heads, at the majesty of the priest, 
holding up in his mortal hands the symbol of the faith of ages. 
He watched the scattering leaves of the trees in the Convent 
garden come floating down: and it seemed to him, at that 
moment at least, as if the Church would endure till those 
trees had scattered their leaves for the last time and the trees 
to come after them were worn and dead — and the trees after 
that, in an infinite procession. He felt the beauty of the 
scene go to his heart and lodge there. He looked up through the 
twined branches of the almost leafless trees and past the 
tangled mass of the wires to the sky — and the shape of the 
dark dome made him think of God. . . . 

It was this circulatory Mass that the Mother Church sent 
round for the consolation of her sons and daughters that 
finally let loose the spring of Robert’s desire to write. He felt, 
in a queer way, as if he had — even if only for a moment — 
drawn near to those human creatures who had come together, 
drawn by belief in something in which he had no belief: but, 
deeper than mere belief, Robert Fulton felt that something there 
— a blind faith — a supreme hope — had drawn him, for once, 
close to these other human creatures — united in their fear of 
death. He had come back to Penelope’s Buildings, with a quiet 
chastened gentle Katie McGee by his side, and he had hurried 
up into his little own room, and there he had sat — for once 
at the door of that underworld where humanity meets — writ- 
ing down . . . what he believed to be the truth. 

He sat at his table night after night in the last days of 
the month, fashioning his work with his own carefulness, coax- 
ing it to take the pattern he wished it to have. He felt for 
this last little section of his Canada Book — for this was to 
end his little thesis — some of the affection the monk Robert 
would have felt for the missal he decorated with leaves and 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


359 

flowers. He dallied over it. He played with it a little. He 
felt as if he couldn’t let it go — he wondered if, when he took 
it and read it to those clear unobstructed eyes, they too would 
see in it what he saw. Would they see that in this last section 
of his booklet Robert Fulton was giving a piece of himself to 
the world? Or was it to the world he was giving it? Was 
it not — to someone who might not wish to take it . . . ? 

When the time came for him to take what he had written 
down-stairs and read it to Miss McGee, he felt a sort of shy- 
ness. It was himself that he was carrying down in his hands 
in those few slips of paper: and — and, it was not to Katie 
that he was giving it. He hesitated — in his old way— even 
about knocking at her door. He felt self-conscious again. Had 
he put too much of himself into those sheets of his? Was it 
too obvious — what he hoped and did not say, even to himself? 
Would she . . . guess? 

He knocked at the door, and when he came past the door 
it was into the same old room with its good feeling of friend- 
liness. Miss McGee was cooking the supper, and soon they 
would be facing one another across the little oblong table — 
how often they had done it now! In the back of his mind — 
unspoken — unconfessed — there was the feeling that here was the 
end, not only of the book, but of something more than that. It 
was the fall. The Lady would be back. He would go to 
her , read to her — with her help he would be able to free him- 
self from Penelope’s Buildings, from the Trefusian Mansions 
that, now, already, could be seen through Miss McGee’s un- 
curtained window, full-blown, hideous, larger even than life. 
He would go to the Lady; he would be free of this squalor — 
perhaps: and, with that feeling we all have when we say 
good-by to a thing, yes, even a hated thing, he found himself 
softening even to Penelope’s Buildings. “Haven’t you been a 
good friend to me, Miss McGee,” he said, quite suddenly and 
apropos of nothing at all when they were seated at supper 
together. “What should I have done without you in this 
hole of a place?” 

And once more Miss McGee noted the tense. “What should 
I have done without you?” “Have done.” It was over. He 
was going away. She felt a clutch at her heart. “Sure,” 
she said, “ye’re welcome, Mr. Fulton.” She stopped, and then — 
she couldn’t say more on that subject — she went on hurriedly, 
“So ye bra’aht down yer wroitin’, eh? That’s good. It’ll be 
loike the old toimes hearin’ ye read again,” she went on, after 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


36° 

a second: and it seemed to her at that moment as if a century 
must have passed since that first time when he came shyly 
down, bringing his papers with him and hiding them secretively, 
as he had done, under his cap on the window-sill yonder. 
When their eyes met now she looked steadily into his. She 
looked into and past the light-blue eyes and read behind them 
what Robert himself hardly knew was there. 

“Star’rt awf with yer readin’, eh,” she said, the minute supper 
was done. “Git roight at ut,” she said; “ye’re eager to be 
at ut, yer hear’rt’s in ut.” And inside herself she thought, 
“An’ why not? Sure, she’s cornin’ home, the bo’oy.” And then, 
unreasoningly, instinctively, self-protectingly, her mind flashed 
back to Tully — yes, even to Mitt — to those men for whom she 
herself had been an entity and desirable. It was just for a 
moment. “Read on,” she said, “git down to ut, Mr. Fulton, 
dear. I’m listenin’, sure.” And she folded her hands. 

“Now for it!” said Robert lightly. He felt — for him — 
quite brisk. 

CHAPTER XLVIII 

Y ET in spite of all the apparent prerogatives which they 
persuade themselves they have secured in the New World, 
these immigrants, or at any rate the elder generation of 
them, do miss something; and that is the tradition they have 
left behind them. What they miss, after the first taste of 
undisciplined liberty has become bitter in the mouth, is the 
flavor of the old aristocratic elements of life. They are of 
course only dimly conscious of what they lack, but they feel that 
something that used to make life a happier thing has gone. 
They get more out of Canada; but the old principle, mostly 
unconscious, perhaps, in Europe, that just because you were the 
more favored in life’s lottery you owed the less fortunate 
brother all that you could freely give to sweeten his lot, is 
almost non-existent in the Newer Worlds. The workers miss 
that, and they miss too, many of them, the courtesy, the 
reticence, the refinement which many generations of practice has 
bestowed on the luckier ones in England.’ 

“I suppose,” said Robert, looking up and speaking in a 
tentative voice, “we never do see the good in things until they 
have ceased to be — for us ?” 

Unconsciously he was addressing Miss McGee as if she 
had been another auditor; the thought of Eileen Martyn was 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 361 

so uppermost in his consciousness as he read, that he had 
almost forgotten he was not reading to her. 

Miss McGee was in her old attitude. She was seated in 
her ugly Windsor chair, leaning forward a little. The elbows 
that had once been dimpled and round and now were hard 
and angular were steadied on the hideous tablecloth before her. 
Into the cup of her still beautiful hands she had laid her 
face, and the fingers were clasped and crossed so that the lower 
part of her face was hidden; the ugly mouth, the too-insistent 
chin were invisible: it seemed in an odd way as if, for the 
moment, the whole of her had migrated into her eyes.. She 
looked out at Robert — at his book — at the world — at life — 
with a steady gaze: as Robert glanced at her after making 
his tentative remark, it seemed to him — for a flash — as if he 
were looking Experience in the face. The Miss McGee he 
was acquainted with, the kindly, impulsive, ungrammatical, il- 
logical woman who was so quick to feel an injury or taste 
a kindness, seemed, for the moment, non-existent; in her 
place was something that represented things done; something 
that had faced the world and been beaten back by it; some- 
thing that had fought the forces of life and been defeated — 
yet something that in facing and fighting and being beaten back 
had learned what only is to be learned that way. Robert 
looked into the blue-black eyes and he felt a lad — a stripling — 
a nonentity. His booklet shrank and shrank until it seemed 
hardly fit to roll along as a pea before the forces of life 
that Katie McGee had faced. . . . 

It was but a second. As soon as Miss McGee spoke the 
spell was broken. Perhaps it was her lack of grammar — her 
accent — that broke the spell: it is hard to hold spells with 
uneducated speech. Just as soon, anyway, as she said, “Ye’ll 
not be thinkin’ Penelope’s Buildin’s beautiful, I guess, onest 
ye’ve broke with ’em,” the thing was gone. She only spoke the 
truth: it would take a deal of good-fortune to hang a halo 
round the unsightly stacks of the Penelopian chimney-pots. 
Yet just as soon Miss McGee had uttered that truth in the 
way she did — she was no longer a Sibyl, a creature saying 
fateful things with unfathomable eyes. She was once more 
plain Miss McGee, worth a dollar and a half a day, a seam- 
stress with no special charm or power or influence at all- 
Robert gave himself a little shake. 

“You’re right,” he said, answering the Miss McGee he 
knew — or possibly just speaking aloud to himself, “it would 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


362 

take a lot to make me love the memory of these Buildings. 
Aren’t they wicked,” he said, glancing round and without the 
slightest intention of saying anything hurting. “Aren’t they 
mean and despicable and sordid beyond all words !” 

Miss McGee knew well he never would have said that had 
he not had the hope of leaving them. 

“We’ve had the good toimes in ’em too,” she remarked, after 
a minute. 

But Robert only sat looking vaguely at her. His thoughts had 
flown once more — to where they were more at home. He sat 
gazing across the little table vaguely yet fixedly until, with a 
start, he gathered himself together and turned back to the 
matter in hand. “Yes,” he said, but still vaguely, “it’s been 
all right. Owing to you,” he glanced up at Katie with a 
smile, before beginning to read. “All owing to you.” 

He concentrated himself once more on the pages before him. 

‘The native-born do not miss these things, nor is it to be 
wished they should. Canada’s greatness lies to a very large 
extent in her absolute ignorance of what she lacks; that is 
the romantic side of her. She lacks nearly all the things 
that make life beautiful, and she is magnificently unaware 
of the fact. The immigrants see that she lacks them — see it 
dimly, feel it, cannot get it into words. They have come 
from the old lands, hoping to be able to lay hold of just those 
things which they have looked at from afar all through their 
European lives. It is the vague longing for something that 
is not in Canada at all — a longing that often translates itself 
into mere grab and hold-fast and loud talk — and the disap- 
pointment that underlies this life of theirs overseas, that gives 
the oddly romantic flavor which one is conscious of in so many 
of them. They miss the aristocratic view of life. They have 
never been sharers in it — only onlookers; they have grown, 
quite rightly, to resent it; yet, all the same, once away from 
it, they miss it, and no amount of mere material prosperity 
can quite make up for it. . . 

Robert looked up. As there was something in his face that 
asked for sympathy, Miss McGee slowly nodded. She nodded 
three times, looking steadily at him. If she had not wholly 
understood what he said, she had comprehended what he wished 
to convey: and, with the stirrings of her ancestry deep down 
in her, she knew that he was right. Dim memories of old 
Mrs. McGee’s talk surged up in her, songs, Irish lullabies with 
which she would croon Katie and Mary to sleep; strains of 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


363 

the airs Willie Bard well used to play came back to her; the 
passionate dashes of melody that Tully used to draw from his 
fiddle rushed, as it seemed, through her blood: the old old 
memories of days when Ireland was still close behind them all, 
when they had still had bits of Ireland in their minds and 
hearts — did they not sew Ireland into the very lace they made 
in Canada? — came floating softly into Katie McGee’s mind. 
She recalled the tones of Ma’a’s voice when she spoke of the hills 
of the country she had left. She thought of the tones of the 
voice itself — so soft, so smooth, so winning. She thought of 
Ma’a’s quiet courtesy, her dignity, her reverence for age . . . 
Katie McGee sat looking deep into Robert’s eyes, and she 
nodded slowly. She didn’t speak. She just nodded to him 
three times: and once more the feeling of Fate passed over 
Robert Fulton. He felt as if the woman, sitting opposite 
him at the other side of the little table, had dipped deep down 
into something he would be forever forbidden to dip down into; 
as if she knew things that he, for all of his school and university 
training had never been able to acquire. As if, when the 
time would come for their bodies to be left behind, he would 
find that woman his superior, his elder, in the things that 
count. What are the things that count? Are they grammar? 
Diction? Style? The mere weighing of words, so many to the 
pound? — the placing of thoughts in an ordered mosaic of let- 
ters? Or is it the dipping down into life that counts? Is it 
the deep feelings, the vague longings after one hardly knows 
what, that one lifts out of the stream of life as it goes 
flowing past — and in which one may immerse oneself . . . 
if one will. Robert sat silent with his Canada Book in his 
hand, watching Katie McGee. 

“You’re not — hurt when I abuse Canada, are you?” he said. 

It was one of his flashes of perception. 

Miss McGee continued to look at him, quite quietly. As 
she looked, slowly, very slowly, her eyes filled with tears. She 
shook her head. 

Once more he had that feeling of Fate. . . . 

And then she spoke. 

“Sure, me dear,” she said, “ye couldn’t hur’rt me ef ye 
tried.” It was a lie. “I’m proud to hear ye read,” she said, 
“ ’tis proud I am ye’ve chose me the fir-rst ” 

Once more her voice had broken the spell. Grammar does 
count — accent — diction. Robert looked across at her and smiled. 
“Oh, I can say anything to you,” he said. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


364 

He turned back to his manuscript. 

The window was a little open. The weather, though damp, 
was as yet not cold: and Katie McGee had balanced the 
luxury of a fire with a slightly-open window. Through this 
window came the shouts of children at play. The “kids” 
of the Trefusian Mansions — full already of well-to-do working 
families — were “playing themselves,” as Miss McGee said, in 
the street. Drayton Place reechoed with their shouts. Some- 
times there was the sound of a blow — a cry. Sometimes one 
could hear the vanquished on its way to its natural consoler, 
saying it would “tell Ma’a, it would.” And sometimes the 
laughter of the young generation came floating through the 
slightly opened window — laughter that was loud, raucous, un- 
cultured, and yet merry . . . 

‘This is only true, however, of the immigrants who are fairly 
mature by the time they set out to seek their fortunes in the 
New World. The younger members, who come to Canada in 
childhood, take naturally to Canada and become Canadians 
pure and simple. Soon there will be a distinction between 
them and their parents and one that will grow wider as the 
years go by. Take the artisan — son of an artisan and grandson 
of another — who comes to Canada: he is capable with his 
hands, he knows his work, yet he is sufficiently adaptable to 
be able to accustom himself to the inferior grade of workman- 
ship that Canada demands. He rises. In the end he buys a 
lot, he builds on it, he employs instead of being employed 
himself, he dresses “like the best.” Yet, in the zenith of his 
success put on this workman evening clothes of the most su- 
perior cut, dress him in English tweeds the best that money 
can buy . . . and his grandfather, the artisan, will stand be- 
fore you: his father the artisan will wear those clothes, plain 
for all to see. He has come to Canada too late to change 
his make. But take the son. He comes to Canada at the 
malleable age and, let him but be both industrious and in- 
telligent, and he will prosper. As he grows up he will be 
clean, smart as to socks and ties, he will wear evening clothes 
as if he were born to them, he will be clear-cut in the matter 
of shaving, he will be fastidious as to cigarettes. If he has 
brains and “knows enough” he will be “in with” his Boss, he 
will be asked to lunch at the Boss’s club, he will learn to 
unfold what he will learn to call his “serviette” — and later 
he will marry. Then he will have “serviettes” of his own, 
and children: and between his children and Canada’s newest 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 365 

noblesse, what is there but a title? And cannot this be 
bought? . . .’ 

It was very quiet in the room. The silence was merely 
broken — as of old! — by the tiny flickerings of burned-out coal 
falling to the hearth. From outside came those insistent 
voices. It was a new sound in Drayton Place. The Trefusian 
Mansions were on the up-grade as Penelope’s Buildings were 
on the down. Children swarmed over-the-way. The Tre- 
fusian door-step and entrance-hall was cluttered up with them. 
There was in the Trefusian mind an indistinct desire to com- 
plain of the Penelopian atmosphere: “Say, ’t’ain’t right over 
there!” There was talk of getting the “Pollis,” of writing to 
“the city.” Meanwhile, into Miss McGee’s little room came 
the voices of the coming citizens of Canada. Robert sat 
reading — pouring forth his ideas, his theories of the New 
World in which he was such an unwilling citizen: and there, 
outside, where one could almost reach it with an outstretched 
hand, was the real thing. The citizen who was going to 
mold Canada. The thing that was going to make the country 
— what it was and is and shall be. The children laughed and 
shouted and sometimes wept . . . but whatever they did, 
they did what a thousand Canada Books and a hundred thou- 
sand Roberts could never do: they created life. They founded 
the country of which Robert Fulton had so much to say. And 
he was so engrossed in what he had to say, he was so absorbed 
in the pages in his hand, that he never even heard the noise 
they made. He was so intensely occupied in gazing into 
the tiny mirror he was busy holding up to Nature that 
he never noticed their reflections in the mirror as they 
passed. 

l . . . and this is really all, I think, it comes to. Viewed 
materially, the workers do improve their position. They de- 
velop will-power and ambition, and if they are clever enough 
they can satisfy, or rather appease, the demands these dis- 
positions make upon them. “Satisfy” their ambition they 
naturally never can — who ever could? — because ambition in 
that sense is a purely egotistical sentiment and as such can 
never be contented. But at least they can welcome with a clear 
heart the change to greater comfort after the long experience 
of being down-trodden and poverty-stricken at home; and it 
is even possible that they may accept Canada enthusiastically 
and say there is no place to compare with it — while, at the 
same time, deep down in them will go on the more or less 


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366 

unconscious conflict of the spirit of the New World against the 
tradition of the old. . . .’ 

Robert Fulton paused a minute. The idea that his book was 
not so bad — that there was a little something — a seed — in it, 
that the seed might sprout and grow, that he might sometime — 
with someone’s help — write something . . . came back to him. 
He sat, looking over the pages he held in his hand into the 
fire. It was red, glowing, the kind of fire in which one sees 
pictures: he sat gazing down into the deep glowing mass. . . . 

It was when the whole fire collapsed, broke into itself as 
it were, with a little clatter and rush, that Robert once more 
woke to the present. He once more gave that little start, 
shook himself together again into life: and, as he did so, the 
thought raced through him, “No, I’m no good. No good . 
I shan’t ever do anything.” He • felt as he had felt when 
he had said this, or something like this, to the Lady. 

‘It is, I fancy, the combination of these divergent strains 
that makes Canada such a confusing place. The immigrants 
want on the one hand the old monarchical form of government, 
with leaders to look up to and obey, and on the other hand 
they want absolute freedom of action and speech, the most 
pronounced individualism imaginable, and the lack of manners 
that goes with such an ideal. Canada is pulled two ways at 
once. Bringing over with her from Europe the reverence for 
an aristocracy, she worships the plutocracy rather than nothing 
at all. Titles and ribbons to stick in her coat still exercise 
the old fascination over her — at the same time she scorns 
the notion of anyone being above her: and the impossibility of 
fusing two such incompatible elements produces the discordant 
result. . . .’ 

It was as Robert read these words that it came home definitely 
and once for all to Katie McGee that he was not inimical 
to the worker. With a great joy she comprehended that he 
wanted even to be friends with him — if he might. With her 
queer perception which was so absolutely different from Robert’s, 
she took hold of the fact — for the first time — that what Robert 
deplored was not the ignorance of the worker — not the lack of 
elegant education which this worker never had had — but his 
desires, his hot lust, after — what Mrs. Glassridge the Second 
represented. Miss McGee understood that her resentment at 
Queenie Glassridge’s way of life was really the same as Robert’s 
dislike of it: both feelings had their root in the sentiment that 
Queenie had no right to such a life as that. Perhaps no one 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


367 

has a right to it, thought Katie, sitting gazing absent-mindedly 
at Robert. Perhaps it is not allowed that we poor mortals 
are to enjoy luxury like that — and not suffer for it someway. 
But this at least was plain. Queenie MacGowan of the Barber’s 
Shop had no right to her Louis Sextorze drawing-room — because 
she could not appreciate it, and therefore could not really possess 
it. It was as if someone should stretch forth an ignorant hand 
and take hold of some precious exquisite bird and squeeze the 
song out of its throat — just in order to possess . . . what is im- 
possible to possess. It began to dawn dimly on Miss McGee 
that in order to possess things you must also be possessed of 
them;' you must know enough to be able to enjoy what they 
can give you — otherwise you hold a dead songster in your hand. 
She gazed at Robert reading, and she not listening at all, and 
she saw the first Mrs. Glassridge, good honest woman that 
she had been, in her self-respecting print gown, over the wash- 
tub, making clean clothes for the Glassridge brood — that brood 
that to-day had left Andrew Glassridge’s house in a body be- 
cause they disapproved so of Queenie MacGowan. “What 
would she do but run away,” Katie McGee said to herself with 
contempt. “What would she be doin’ but git where it’s 
safe . . . .” Once more Mrs. Glassridge Number Two, Aphrodite 
the Second arisen from the ateliers of Paris, Queenie Mac- 
Gowan canonized and crowned, sank back to that hollow where 
she had dropped when she went South with her maid. She 
had had a brief resurrection in Katie McGee’s mind — and now 
she dropped back. “I’ll not wor’rk fer her again, God help me,” 
Katie said to herself, “her’s punk.” And the listening part 
of her awoke again. 

Tf Canada had had the courage to say to England,’ Robert 
read — “Titles are not for such as we. Decorations sit ill on 
the stone-breaker, and ribbons in the buttonholes are out of 
place on the tradesman. Leave us alone. We want neither 
your titles nor your ribbons. Leave us with the wealth we 
can dig out of our land and let us spend it simply, our own 
way. Our manners will then have their proper fitness; our 
attitude to life will be self-respecting,” — think how she would 
have been respected — what an example she would have shown 
the world ! It is unreasonable to blame her. It is unreasonable 
to expect that the workers of England who suddenly, after long 
years of drudgery and toil, find themselves with a little super- 
fluous wealth at their disposal, should develop that self-respect 
which must precede any true originality. They have been kept 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


368 

under for too many generations to be able to recover their poise 
all at once, and no doubt we ought to have the same sympathy 
with them in their prosperous hour as in their days of adversity. 
But it is harder to sympathize naturally and humanly with the 
working-man when he is titled and palatial and busy pretend- 
ing not to be a working-man at all than when, in his work- 
aday dress, he is making his way homewards after a long 
spell of labor. If they would leave aristocracy alone, if they 
wou!4 not attempt to found a noblesse of silver plate and pinch- 
beck; if they would acknowledge themselves for what they are — 
the descendants of the Workers of the World, those very workers 
upon whom the world has been dependent for so many centuries 
and by whose aid the great power over nature, which the world 
is so busy wasting to-day, has been obtained — who would be 
found to criticize or slight them? Who would not rather join 
the company of emigrants and make with all speed for such 
a land of Promise and Performance. . . . ?’ 

Robert’s voice sank. 

‘We must wait yet awhile,’ he read, ‘before such a scheme 
of things as that can find acceptance: the time of chaos is 
upon us and will stay with us many a weary day. Yet so many 
things — bad as well as good — are being shattered to bits around 
us now that it is not unreasonable to hope perhaps, that some 
time they will be remolded nearer the heart’s desire.’ 

He was silent. The Canada Book was done. The two sat 
for a long time, not looking at one another but each gazing 
straight downwards, into the fire . . . that was losing its red 
glow and rapidly going out. 

“ ’Tis the great book, Mr. Fulton,” Miss McGee said at last 
in a low tone, “an’ ’tis the poor one I been to read ut to.” She 
swallowed something before she went on. “ ’Tis little good I 
am. I know ut. But — ye put me woise this toime. Ye made 
ut clear. . . .” 

She paused for a long time — or so it seemed to both of them. 

“An’ Ma’a’d ’a’ loiked ut too,” she said, as if there had been 
no pause, “an’ ’twas the good woman she wa’as, be-lieve me” 

Robert raised his eyes and looked at Miss McGee. 

“She was a sensible woman, I know, Miss McGee,” he said, 
“and a wise woman too.” He stopped a moment. “I fancy she 
was a fine woman, your mother,” he said. “If Canada was 
made up of Mrs. McGees with men to match — it would be the 
country of the world.” 

They said no more than this. The end of the Canada Book 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


369 

came as the ends of things do come — just naturally and, in a 
way, unexpectedly. Miss McGee had somehow always pictured 
to herself something — something dramatic happening at the end. 
She had thought there would be a climax — that she would be 
able to say something worth while and Robert something miracu- 
lously wonderful: and now it was at an end. The reading was 
over. What had meant so much to Katie McGee was a thing 
of the past — like so many other things. 

“You’ve — you’ve enjoyed it, haven’t yqu?” Robert said, gath- 
ering up the pages of his manuscript to take them away. 

“I have that,” Miss McGee said — it had been a phrase of 
her mother’s: and then a flash of her every-day fear came 
over her and put the reading to the back of her mind. 

“Ye’re a’al roight, eh, ain’t ye?” she asked. 

“I’m perfectly all right,” Robert replied. And this time it 
was with a smile and no trace of irritation. He went up- 
stairs. 


CHAPTER XLIX 

I T had been a satisfactory close to a satisfactory evening; 
Miss McGee — measuring enjoyment by rather a different 
standard from what she had ever been accustomed to use 
before — felt that perhaps she had never enjoyed herself so 
much : it all depended on whether you were measuring enjoy- 
ment with the passionate or the contented yard-stick. But, just 
as soon as Robert had gone, she put the evening and all its 
beautiful facts away to the back of her mind: she undressed 
rapidly, slipped into her felt foot-wear and her old wrapper and 
big coat, and went her rounds. The second chorus-girl was 
yet very ill ; one of the bunch of tarts was dead and another was 
dying. Mrs. Savourin, very pale and weak and thin and 
unlike herself, was up struggling to get herself what she called 
“some gruel.” In Miss McGee’s vocabulary this was spelled 
differently; but she coaxed her back to bed again with the 
promise of bringing her “the gruel”: and then she went on 
to the bad man across the court in the old so-familiar flat, and 
found him fulfilling the promise of the psalmist with the green 
bay-tree in the distance. 

“ ’Tis the way,” Miss McGee said to herself, as she went back 
to her own room to collect spirit-lamp and matches, the re- 
mains of her morning’s bottle of milk and Mrs. Savourin’s glass 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


37 ° 

of gin (out of one of poor old Mrs. Morphy’s bottles that she 
still kept “against the need of ut”). “’Tis the way,” she said, 
as she went down-stairs once more. “ ’Tis them bad ’uns gits 
there, bless ’em.” She felt no rancor against the bad man, 
none against the psalmist who also, it seemed, simply accepted 
such: she just took his recovery as part of the scheme of things. 
Part of the mess of life and therefore incontestably to be ac- 
cepted. 

And a few minutes after that the bad man — yes, and even 
Robert’s final section — had disappeared into the very back of 
her mind, as she assisted the dying tart to raise herself in bed, 
and held her while she panted and suffocated for breath. “She’s 
gawn,” she said to the $ole remaining tart, a big-eyed, thin, worn 
girl. “ ’Tis gawn she is, my dear. She’ll not la’ast out the 
noight.” “Would ye want me come set be ye here, “Miss McGee 
added after a moment — as her eyes met the frightened eye of 
the third of the bunch of prostitutes that she had so bitterly 
decried. “Will I come spend the noight with ye, eh?” Miss 
McGee said: and, in response to what she read in the frightened 
eyes that looked into hers, she added, “Wait jes’ a minnut. I’ll 
git me sha’ahl fer me head an’ another sha’ahl an’ some pillas. 
Don’t ye git a’all fussed up now,” she said in a low voice 
to the girl as she parted from her at the door. “I’ll see ye 
through. I’ll be back. I shan’t be a minnut.” 

She crossed the little landing and disappeared into her own 
flat, leaving the door wide open behind her. The departing 
spirit is a disquieting thing. It arouses a sort of fear in us 
poor mortals when it is cleaving its way through the perishing 
body. 

“Wait jes’ a minnut, eh,” Miss McGee said over her shoulder 
to the girl. 

“Gee, I’ll wait,” the third tart said, taking her station by 
her own wide-open door. She followed Miss McGee as far as 
she could into the depths of the unknown flat with her anxious 
eyes. 

“Mat’s dead,” she kept saying to herself. “Mattie’s dead. 
An’ now Florrie’s goin’. What in hell am I goin’ to do . . . ?” 

And then Miss McGee came back through her doorway and 
across the landing and stood a second at the threshold she had 
so little expected ever to cross. Her arms were full of things. , 

“Now, Miss,” she said, looking at the girl. “You’ll sleep.” 

They went into the flat together and Miss McGee softly closed 
the door behind them. 


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371 


CHAPTER L 

T HIS all happened on the night of November the 2nd — 
just towards the close of the Great War. On the morning 
of the third — very early, as the first straggling gray shreds 
of dawn were finding their way through the night sky — the 
second of the bunch of tarts died. She died, not peacefully as 
Mr. Barclay had died: she died painfully and harrowingly, as 
she had lived. Miss McGee saw her through it, as she said: 
and when the spirit had at last cleaved its way through the re- 
luctant flesh, she closed the eyes of the girl who had lived 
by selling her flesh, and she laid the hands on the bosom that 
had so often bared itself for money. She said a prayer over 
the poor body that was saved so much by dying while it was 
still young: and she took the sole remaining tart into her own 
flat and gave her breakfast there, soothed her hysterical sobbing, 
talked to her, distracted her, made her eat, and then, when she 
herself had to go out, put her on the spare mattress on which 
the chorus-girl down-stairs had died — and left her to sleep in 
her flat. “She’s a bad gir’rl a’alroight,” Miss McGee said to 
herself as she took her way to Wellston Road. “I guess her 
name is mud. But,” she said to herself, exactly as she had said 
it to Robert, “ye can’t let ’em die ” And the remembrance of 
the dead girl came across her, and it struck her that on that 
worn young face there was the same look of majesty and re- 
pose that there had been on Mrs. Morphy’s face as she had 
lain in her casket in the shack on the confines of the city. 
Miss McGee stopped short in her lagging walk as this thought 
struck her — she was on her way to the car; she was too tired, 
after her night of watching to walk all the way to Wellston 
Road. And, as she stood considering this matter on the side- 
walk, it came to her that on the face of the chorus-girl, once 
she was dead, there had come the same look of quiet dignity. 
She too had looked at rest, and as if something, on leaving 
the frail tenement of the body, had stamped on it the hall-mark 
of residence. “I have inhabited this tenement,” seemed to be 
written on all these faces. “And in going I leave my mark. 
I am that which is and always has been and always will be. 
I am the divine that rests in every human body — and in leaving 
the body I write my signature across it.” 

“The poor soul ” Miss McGee said to herself. And then 
she said “the poor souls ” lumping together the chorus-girl and 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


372 

Mrs. Morphy and the poor prostitute and respectable Mr. 
Barclay and Nonnie and her unborn child in one heap in her 
thoughts. It went through her mind in an unseizable kind 
of way that we are all emanations from the divine; that we 
may deface our bodies, but that which our bodies contain we 
cannot deface. . . . 

And then, seeing her car in the distance, she began to run: 
and having boarded the car she was too breathless to think. 
She peered over the shoulder of the “ ‘young lady” next her who 
was reading the morning’s news (the car was empty but for 
herself and this “young lady” — the business men were all 
going the other way) and she looked at the head-lines. “Glory 
be to God,” she thought to herself, “it looks loike winnin’ now.” 
And into her mind came the picture of the Irish Rovers — her 
own bo’oys, as she called them to herself — swinging through 
Regalia with their fine free step ... a fine lot of men, with 
the best band in the ar-rmy, God bless ’em, marching at their 
head. 

When she got to Mrs. Barclay’s, and in the fullness of her 
heart began to tell the things that were happening to Penelope’s 
Buildings, Mrs. Barclay and Katie — the good-natured Miss Bar- 
clay — began to get a big basket ready, full of comforts and kind- 
nesses to the flesh, so that Miss McGee might have plenty to 
distribute on her return at night. Miss McGee kept to herself 
the profession of the girl who had died in the night. It was 
all very well for herself to overlook such things in the fullness 
of a time of sorrow, but she knew that Mrs. Barclay would 
be inflexible on the subject. As well make confidences of a 
sexual kind to a piece of whalebone. Miss McGee held her 
tongue — and with gratitude she accepted the basket. 

She listened very kindly that day to Mrs. Barclay’s aspira- 
tions in widowhood. She did her best with the crape . . . 

It was on the fourth of the month that the blow fell. Miss 
McGee went homewards that day as quickly as she could, her 
basket in hand (Mrs. Barclay had insisted on a daily basket 
once Miss McGee had opened her heart) and her thoughts intent 
on the sufferers she was going home to. Since the first of 
November Penelope’s Buildings had gone under altogether. 
Probably the smallest microbe in the world had passed from 
one Penelopian to another: but, at any rate, the whole place 
was down with the influenza. It seemed as if the peeling 
plaster of the walls must be charged with the deadly microbe; 
and as the plaster peeled a little more — and more, as if 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


373 

showers of microbes fell and overwhelmed the inhabitants of 
the rooms . . . with death. 

Miss McGee had done a lot of telephoning at Mrs. Barclay’s 
in the day-time, and she hoped to find, as a result of her 
telephoning, at least one District Visiting Nurse in charge of 
the Buildings. She had also got hold of a doctor who had 
promised to come: and she had made arrangements with Mrs. 
Barclay that, should she not appear on the morning of the fifth, 
they would understand that she could not be spared. “I’ll 
’phone ye up in the course of the day, eh, ef I’m not cornin’,” 
Miss McGee said, “but I don’t know what toime it’ll be. I’ll 
have to git out to ’phone, and ut may be I’ll have to stay home 
roight where I am an’ see to ’em.” To Mrs. Barclay’s sug- 
gestion that she should stay where she was, sleep at Wellston 
Road and abandon Penelope’s Buildings to its fate, she had 
hardly deigned a negative. “What do ye take me fer?” she 
said. “One of ’em that’ll skip out?” Her tone had been 
definite and unanswerable, and neither Mrs. nor Miss Barclay 
had attempted to answer it. They had merely pressed on her 
a bundle of “old clean rags” for poultices and fomentations; 
they had guaranteed daily baskets of food by “Express.” And, 
on parting, Mrs. Barclay had pressed into Miss McGee’s hand 
a ten dollar bill. “Take it,” she said, “it’ll be a tribute to — 
him ” She meant Mr. Barclay. “He’s looking down on us,” 
Mrs. Barclay said, “you may be sure, McGee. An’ he’ll be 
glad to know I’m doing my bit, Mr. Barclay will, the way I 
always done.” 

It was impossible for Mrs. Barclay to do anything quite 
right; but the ten dollars were invaluable, and Miss McGee 
took them. Not, be it well understood, as a present to herself, 
but as a charity towards the poor. “It’ll be made up to her 
a’alroight, I guess,” she said to herself casually in the car 
going home. (Miss Barclay had provided a “bunch” of car- 
tickets.) Miss McGee meant of course that, once Mrs. Barclay 
was translated upwards she would find this ten-dollar bill 
waiting to be paid back to her — with due interest added thereto. 
We all, I suppose, tend unconsciously to adjust Heaven to the 
measure of our various friends. That was the sort of Heaven 
that Miss McGee foresaw for Mrs. Barclay: and she saw 
nothing inappropriate about the vision. 

She had been too busy all day long sewing and telephoning 
and thinking about the various sufferers she had on her mind to 
consider Robert at all. Somehow, since everyone else in her 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


374 

environment had fallen sick, the terror about Robert had to 
a great extent passed out of her mind. It wasn’t so much 
that she hadn’t had time to think about him perhaps — we 
always have time to feel terror for those we love — as that she 
had accepted a more or less fatalistic view of the world. 
She had come to say to herself after viewing the deaths of 
the influenza sufferers round about her, “It had to be, I guess. 
They’re dyin’ loike flies, God help ’em, but ut has to be.” As 
is the case in times of acute sorrow and terrible suffering 
and desolation, the sense of God had become apparent. Moving, 
as she was becoming accustomed to do, in an atmosphere of 
death, Miss McGee had come to feel the presence of God. 
She had come to be sensible of God’s immediate nearness to us 
— all the days of our life, though in joy we have less imme- 
diate need of His presence and so are less conscious of Him. 
She said to herself, viewing the swift irrevocable course of the 
disease, “It’s in God’s hands, eh. It’s in His hands.” And she 
felt that she trusted Robert to God. That He would take care 
of him. That — yes, for the past day or two, quite irrationally, 
she had felt it — Robert was safe. 

When she got home on the evening of the fourth — a Monday 
night — she went hurriedly into her own flat and threw some 
kind of a meal together. There was little to be done to get 
it, for she had Mrs. Barclay’s basket to fall back upon. She 
had only .to dip in and take Jennet’s good well-cooked food 
out. It passed through her mind as she picked out the choicest 
things and placed them on the table that it must be a grand 
thing to live like that; to be able always to just take things 
out from somewhere ready-made and sit down and eat them. 
There was no envy mixed on this occasion with her thought. It 
just slipped through her mind that it must be a great thing to 
live like that. 

And then, just as many times before, she said to herself, 
“He’ll enjoy that, bless um !” And an involuntary smile lighted 
up, just for a second, her tired anxious face. 

She was very tired. She had been working out every day, 
and nursing all night, going from one patient to another, 
taking the merest shortest naps between the rounds, and as 
her patients could spare her services. She was tired out. 
She felt “on edge.” And yet, past the being on edge, away 
behind it, she felt, as we all feel in those times of desperate 
stress and strain, a sense of security and grave calm. There 
were moments when she felt as if she must go under from 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


375 


sheer physical faitgue; and then some mysterious force seemed 
to enter into her and stay her; it gave her something to lean 
against, as it were. It was as if she heard a voice saying to 
her, “I will uphold you. Have no fear.” 

The moment Robert came in to his supper she knew that 
the blow had fallen. As she looked at him out of her tired 
eyes she saw in his — absolutely clearly and irrevocably — the 
signs she knew by now so well. He didn’t complain at all. 
He sat down to his meal as usual. His movements were languid, 
but he didn’t say anything about being tired : he was even more 
talkative, more communicative, than usual. He vouchsafed 
various little bits of news about the Arundel Market. He told 
her how the man who had stood next to him all the three 
years he had been in the Market himself, had fallen with so 
many others by the way. He was dead. “I liked him,” Robert 
said — though in the fellow’s life-time he had hardly spoken 
to him. “I always liked him. He did his duty.” He paused 
a second, and then added, smiling faintly, “It isn’t altogether 
easy to do your duty, you know, in the Arundel Market. And 
the cashier’s ill, poor girl,” he concluded, and then he lay 
back in his chair, putting down his knife and fork and covering 
up apologetically what he hadn’t been able to eat. 

“I’m sorry, Miss McGee,” he said — Robert belonged by this 
time to the people who finish what they have on their plates 
and feel they haven’t done their duty to God and Man if they 
don’t. “I’m sorry. It’s very nice — but I’m not hungry.” 

He didn’t say any more, and this time Miss McGee did not 
say, “Are ye a’alroight?” She said nothing. She merely sat and 
looked at him. For a second she felt a sense of God having 
failed to do His part . . . and then the fatalistic sense re- 
turned on her with redoubled force and, rising from the table, 
she said to herself, “It has to be. It has to be. There ain’t no 
more to be said about ut.” 

On the 7th of November Robert Fulton died. He died in the 
little flat out of which he had so wished to go. He died, quietly, 
with no fuss, as he had lived. He slipped out of life with infi- 
nitely less trouble than poor Mrs. Morphy had had in getting rid 
of her troublesome flesh; he died more quietly even than Mr. 
Barclay, more calmly than the poor prostitute who had lived 
two stairs below him. 

He had become delirious practically at once. Not a painful 
delirium that it was torture to be beside; but a quiet delirium 
that changed sometimes for a moment to a recognition of life 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


376 

as it is — and then, quietly, and in a sort of inexplicable man- 
ner slipped off the rails into a disordered view of the past and 
the present and the future all in one: a sort of previsagement 
of that time which we are told will come, when there will be 
no past and no present and no future: when the three are 
one and we ourselves are quite otherwise than what we are 
to-day. 

He saw himself as a child, kindly treated enough, nothing to 
complain about — but without love. He saw himself growing 
up without that love that is to the human creature what air 
and moisture and sunlight are to the plant. He saw himself 
at school — apt at learning, with a retentive memory and a 
perceptive mind. He saw himself slipping out of the sheath 
of boyhood into manhood at College, still alone, always alone — 
timid a little for want of that air and moisture and sunlight 
that he had never had. And he saw himself in Canada; in 
Regalia — savoring the life of the New World, at first hope- 
fully, and then less hopefully, and then, definitely and only 
as a mistake he had made, but a mistake that he must stand 
by. He talked a lot of Miss McGee — recognized her sometimes 
as she leaned over his bed, spoke to her, gave her a hot 
hand, spoke sometimes sense, sometimes nonsense; but always 
affectionate words. He recognized in Miss McGee, now when he 
was “out of himself,” what he had not recognized when he was 
“in himself.” He recognized in her the air and the sunlight 
and the moisture he had required and had never had in his 
childhood and youth. He saw it in the expression of her 
eyes as she leaned over him, he heard it in the tones of her 
voice as she spoke to him. 

“Miss McGee ...” 

He still called her that. No more intimate name than Mr. 
Fulton and Miss McGee had ever passed between them. 

Once, when he was quite delirious, he had babbled of the 
Lady. Once. Just once. Nothing that mattered. A re- 
membrance of the copper tray that her blue blouse had shown 
so blue against. A memory of her room with the evening 
sunlight streaming into it — a thought of the hill outside her 
window that one could look at through the interlacing branches 
of the tree that grew in her courtyard. He spoke once of 
her eyes — translucent — shining: and once he said, “I am com- 
ing. Wait . . .” 

And on the day of the False Peace, as it is called in Canada, 
he died. He died to the sound of the trumpets and the rattles, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


377 


the clashing together of metal and the shouts of the people 
that the false rumor of peace called out. As he lay in his 
bed with the sounds coming through the slightly-open window, 
he turned a little to Miss McGee, and he whispered, “How 
young 1” He meant Canada. He was quite himself then — he 
died quite himself. He told Miss McGee in broken whispers 
to take his money — it was forty-two dollars all told — to bury 
him with it (his savings that he had put away with such 
trouble and strain) and to keep the rest for herself. “A 
little gift from me,” he said with a smile. And then, for 
seconds, he would wander. He thought himself once at the con- 
cert down at the Summer Park — for he said, “Those hands!” 
And once he thought himself back at Cambridge with its 
river and its trees and its quiet English grace — for he spoke 
of it by name. But he died knowing himself to be where he was 
— in Regalia. Insistently the shouts came pouring in at his 
window. The Peace whistles blew — the men shouted and the 
women shrieked — and, underneath the shouts and the shrieks, 
there was a sort of ground-bass all the time of a trampling of 
feet and a steady hum of talk. “How young!” It seemed to 
Robert Fulton, dying, that Canada was something so young — 
so young — that it had hardly begun to live at all; that it had 
hardly even managed to get successfully born. The crude 
sounds of the celebration of Peace — the False Peace of Novem- 
ber 7th — floated in to him, and he thought of Canada as a 
child — a babe — as a sort of Hercules slipping through the 
womb of Time and holding in its arms the twin-powers of infi- 
nite size and infinite wealth. . . . 

It was the last thought in his mind as he died. “How young!” 

Miss McGee composed his body as she had composed the 
other bodies of the dead. She washed him as a mother washes 
her son: and in her ministrations to the dead she sought the 
help of the girl over the way — the one remaining girl of 
the three whose presence beside her she had so bitterly re- 
sented. Together those two women laid Robert Fulton's body 
to rest. The girl spoke not at all. She said absolutely nothing. 
She helped Miss McGee, and when she had finished helping her 
she vanished again into her flat. They washed him and clothed 
him for the grave as best they could. Miss McGee fetched 
the best she had and put it on him — and while they prepared 
him for his last rest, she hid of him what she could from the 
gaze of the stranger. It seemed to Miss McGee that she was 
working with a sacred thing that must not be shown to the 


378 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

eyes of the multitude : and the girl helped silently, and vanished 
back into her flat. 

When it was over and Robert lay quietly in his room, Miss 
McGee went down-stairs and fetched two candlesticks and put 
into them two long candles that she had had a long time 
ready for her own dead body; she brought these candles up- 
stairs and placed them beside Robert, so that at night his 
face should be lighted up by them. And then she prepared for 
the watch. Cassie Healy (back from the Hospital but the 
night before, thin and pale as one is thin and pale after 
typhoid fever) had done “the business.” To her, willingly 
and trustfully, Miss McGee had committed all the business 
part of Robert’s death. “Don’t matter what ut cawsts,” she 
had said to Cassie more than once. “Order ut good. Have ut 
roight. An’ see ut is roight.” She had added once, “There’s 
loads of mooney.” It was the first time in her life that she 
had uttered such a phrase. And with that she had shut the 
door on the world outside and she had sat down to watch beside 
her dead. 


CHAPTER LI 

W HEN Robert Fulton was laid to rest on the hill he had 
seen from Eileen Martyn’s window, Miss McGee turned 
and went down-hill again. She had felt, as she came 
up from the town, as if she were mounting the hill for a 
thing apart: as if this were the supreme moment of her life. 
As if she were carrying up a jewel in its casket, and as if 
she were laying this jewel aside — to be safe there. When it 
was laid away she turned and came down-hill again. And as 
she came she felt that she was coming down-hill into life, 
and she felt that she would not be able to bear life any more. 
And then she felt that she must bear life, that life was there 
to be lived, and she must live it to the end. And she did 
not see how that was possible. 

She was perfectly calm. The tears that she had shed over 
the deaths of Nonnie and Mr. Barclay she had not shed 
over Robert. The sorrow that she had felt and shown over the 
death of Mrs. Morphy she had not felt at all over the death of 
Robert. Since he had died, indeed, she had felt almost noth- 
ing at all. She had sat beside his dead body, not deeply un- 
happy, not torn by sorrow, as she would have expected herself 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


379 

to be, but calm, quite calm, upheld, as it were, always by 
that mysterious power that had upheld her throughout his ill- 
ness. From the moment when he had come into her room on 
the night of the fourth of the month, from the instant when 
she had turned her eyes to him then and had recognized on 
him the marks of death — the violet hue of his face, the lassitude, 
the fever — she had felt almost nothing at all. Immediately on 
noticing his condition she had become intensely, immensely, 
severely practical. She had been so full of plans to relieve his 
pain and distress, she had been so wide-eyed to watch for the 
first symptoms of anything she had had in her power to help, 
that there had been time for nothing else in her. She had 
had no moment that she could set aside to feel. All that short 
time of his sickness she had been intent on him. Her self, her 
own feelings, her desolation, her despair, had been non-existent 
for her: or possibly she had felt them behind somewhere, far 
behind, but she had been able to push them even farther 
back so that they might not interfere for an instant with her 
care of her beloved sick. From the first moment when Robert 
came to her, ill, to the moment when his dear body was laid 
in the grave, Miss McGee had ceased to exist. She had been 
as one without a body. She had been merely something that had 
lived in order to be to Robert Fulton what he needed to have. 
She had felt, even as he lay quite quiet and reposeful and gently 
aloof on his bed in his poor room with the candles at his 
head, that he still needed her. She had sat beside him all the 
time that he “needed” her; and all that time she had felt quite 
calm, perfectly reposeful, conscious neither of pain nor acfie nor 
tiredness — nor of unhappiness, any more than she had been 
conscious of hunger or thirst. It was as if the essential part 
of her was somewhere else, communing with the essential part 
of him, and communing with an intimacy and an understanding 
that Robert Fulton and Miss McGee had never achieved on 
this earth. She had felt completely reposeful with her dead: 
and even the rounds that she had not neglected to make amongst 
the sick of the Buildings had not interfered in the least with 
this sense of — of all being right. She had attended to the 
wants of the sufferers quite mechanically and perfectly kindly 
and correctly. She had soothed them and fed those of them 
who could take what nourishment she had to give, and then 
she had gone back to the room where Robert lay quiet and 
reposeful, and she had sat once more beside him and drunk in, 
as it were, the majestic calm that he exhaled. Once it had 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


380 

flashed across her with a sense of surprise that she was feeling 
nothing. “Am I gawn crazy, p’raps?” she had said to her- 
self: and then, in the calmness of the darkened room, the 
surprise had slipped away from her, and she had sat, leaning 
back, careless of the slipping past of time, thinking not 
at all, merely conscious that she was beside the body of the 
man she loved — almost happy. 

And now, with the laying away of this man, and the com- 
ing down-hill after the laying of him away — alone — the vultures 
of desolation and misery laid hold of her and tore and rended 
her heart. It seemed to her as if she could no longer live. 
She stood on Regalia’s hill and looked down on the beautiful 
river flowing majestically past; she looked at the blue sky 
above — for miraculously, at last, it was a lovely day; she looked 
at the beauty of the trees that Robert had always so admired; 
she looked at the other part of the hill where he and she 
had picnicked together in the hot summer evenings: and it 
seemed to her as if it were impossible to be borne. She felt 
that God had failed her. She felt that life, as she had lived 
it before the coming of Robert, was unbearable. She felt that 
more life — more life — was impossible to be borne. And at 
last, at last, the hot scalding tears of despair welled up into 
her eyes and burned her eyelids as they gushed their way 
through, and scalded her cheeks as they coursed down them. 
And the taste of the tears was salt in her mouth. . . . 

“I can’t bear ut,” she said out loud to the sky and the trees 
and the great stretching landscape below. “How can I bear 
ut? I’ve lawst everythin’ there is. They’re gawn — they’re all 
gawn.” She meant Tully and Mitt and her mother and her 
mother’s friends. “An’ now he's gawn.” She meant Robert. 
“It’s not fair,” she cried out passionately between her dry 
shaking sobs. “It’s not fair. It ain’t. It ain’t. It ain't!” 
The beauty of the day seemed an insult to her as she stood 
on the hill with the salt tears running down into her mouth. 
The blue sky seemed a mockery, the course of the river 
seemed a wickedness to look at. For one horrible moment, 
as she stood there, all the cathedral of her faith fell round 
her — she seemed to hear the rending of things, the falling 
of deep essential beliefs. And then through her ignorant mind 
there rushed the thought — could God have been angry with her 
that there had been no celebrations at the death-beds she had 
assisted at? “But how could I?” she cried to God, “they 
didn’t believe, God help ’em.” And, with the saying aloud 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


38 1 

of the name of God, this fear departed from her. She knew 
that God would accept their souls — He who had sent their 
souls into the world — as they went back to Him, without the 
blessing of a priest. Half of her mind clung to the faith in 
which she had been brought up — the ignorant half; and the 
other half, the half that, with God’s help, had wrought itself 
free, knew that God is God, and that He is all-merciful, and 
that He welcomes all alike — the chorus-girl, Nonnie’s unborn 
child, Mr. Barclay, the prostitute, Robert. As she recognized 
this the extremity of her despair seemed to pass away from her. 
The desolation of loneliness remained; but God was with her 
in the loneliness — and she could bear it. She gathered herself 
together as best she could, and with the tears still running down 
her cheeks, she went further down-hill towards the city. As 
she went the practical common-sense that had enabled her of late 
to minister to those in trouble all round about her returned 
to her: and it upheld her — with God. Possibly it was God 
manifesting Himself in that shape. 

She went back to Penelope’s Buildings and up into Robert’s 
flat. She had closed the door behind them this morning and 
taken the key in her pocket. She went through his flat now, 
putting it in order. She took the money that he had passed 
on to her as a “little gift,” and she collected together carefully 
the pages of the Canada Book, and took them downstairs with 
her to tie them into a parcel. When she had tidied all of 
Robert’s room, placed everything in order, taken out of the 
room all that he would wish to have taken out of it, she came 
away out of it herself. On the threshold, before closing the 
door, she stood looking round it a moment. It was bare and 
very quiet. The plaster that had so annoyed Robert was still 
peeling off the wall. Now that its inmate was gone out of 
it the room showed, as rooms do in some mysterious way, 
a change. It looked more squalid than it had done when 
Robert lived in it. It looked poorer than it had done then. 
There was something terribly desolate about it now that Robert’s 
smile was taken out of it. The thought passed through her 
mind that he ought not to have lived there — that it was a 
wickedness that he should have been thrown away in such a 
room: and then, to banish the thought, she held very tight 
on to the thought of God. She went down-stairs to her own 
flat and quietly shut the door behind her. 

There she did the Canada Book up into a neat parcel. 
Then, still quietly, she undressed and washed herself very 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


382 

thoroughly, she dressed herself again, putting on all clean 
things: and on the top of her clean underwear she put on the 
old black dress and the old black hat that she kept in the 
old-fashioned way “for deaths”: she had worn them to Robert’s 
funeral, and now she put them on once more. She tidied up 
her flat as she had tidied up Robert’s: and, always with 
perfect composure, she went out of her flat and down the stairs 
and took her way to the Lady’s. 

“She’ll be home p’raps,” she said to herself. She felt she 
couldn’t telephone somehow, she felt she must go and see. And 
when she knocked at the Lady’s door, the Lady herself opened 
it. 

“You!” she said. “Come in. I’m only just back last 

night ” And then, looking into Miss McGee’s face she said, 

“What’s the matter?” 

Miss McGee stayed a long time at the Lady’s. She spent 
all the afternoon there, and when she came away it was getting 
dark. She told her in those hours everything there was to 
tell. She told her Robert’s history, her own feeling for Robert, 
all that Robert had ever said to her, all that she had not said 
to him — what she had thought — what she had wished — his 
death — what she felt now. . . . 

She told the Lady everything, and when it was all told 
she took the parcel she had made of the Canada Book and she 
held it out to the Lady. “Take ut,” she said, “he’d’ve wanted 
ye to have ut,” — and in letting go of the book she felt as 
if she were parting from the child of her own body. 

Miss Martyn took it, and held it in her hands a minute as 
if she did not know quite what to do with it. And then, 
with the almost mechanical movement of the person accus- 
tomed to deal with books all her life long, she opened the 
parcel and took the manuscript out and began to glance over 
its pages. 

For a bit she read in silence. Now and then she shook 
her head, as if dissenting from what she read, or disapproving 
of it, or thinking, as Miss McGee said to herself, it would 
not “do.” Once or twice her lips moved as if she were re- 
peating something over to herself — and then she turned a page, 
still shaking her head. 

“ ’Tis the grand book I’d have ye know,” Miss McGee said. 
She could not have said just why she said it: but she felt 
a passionate desire in her to protect Robert’s book — if the 
Lady did not like, could not appreciate, did not know the 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 383 

value of what had been entrusted to her, she wanted to 
snatch it from her, clasp it to her own bosom, keep it warm 
there. “ ’Tis the great book. . . .” 

Eileen Martyn made no answer. She merely sat turning 
pages, at first rapidly, as she glanced down the clear legible 
lines; then more slowly: as she went on further, always more 
and more slowly. 

“There are good things here,” she said once, without looking 
up: it was almost as if she were speaking to herself. And 
she read half aloud, as if she were alone and were trying the 
words to see what they tasted like, ‘A human being, like a 
bulb, ought to pass a certain period in the cool darkness and 
give his roots time to get strength and penetrate downwards. 
After he is rooted let him spread by all means; but until 
he has the power of growth in him let him be kept comfort- 
ably in his cellar and watered punctually and tended with 
all due care; and let those premature leaves which will prevent 
the healthy formation of the later blossom be judiciously 
repressed.’ 

“That’s quite good,” the Lady said, musingly. “It’s — nicely 
put.” 

Miss McGee sat listening. The time when Robert had 
read that to her in his gentle cultivated voice came before 
her: she felt as if she could not — could not — bear it: tears, 
less scalding than those tears that had forced themselves from 
her on the hill, came into her eyes, overflowed them, ran 
down her cheeks. 

“And this is nice,” the Lady cried in her impetuous way, 
still without looking up, ‘Of all the immigrants the penniless 
aristocrat is the only one without the aggressive quality: know- 
ing himself to be as good as you, if not somewhat better, he 
refrains, in the true aristocratic spirit, from even hinting at such 
a thing . . .’ — and a moment later, she laughed outright. 
‘In Canada there is the real Middle Class English attitude 
towards art of every kind; you pay your money to see and 
hear it and thank God when you can come away again.’ “Yes,” 
she said to herself, “there are nice things in here. . . .” 

It was soon after this that Eileen Martyn began to turn the 
pages differently. Miss McGee, attentive, jealously attentive, 
beside her, saw the difference. She turned more slowly, read- 
ing far more carefully what was on every page: and occasion- 
ally she turned back as if she had missed something and wished 
to catch it up. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


384 

In Katie McGee’s mind there was pain. She had put the 
book into those strange hands because she knew that for 
Robert those hands would be the book’s home. But it was not 
less pain to her to see the hands “meddlin’ ut,” turning it over, 
looking at it, glancing at it, “pickin’ the brains of ut,” as 
Miss McGee said to herself. She had resented the Lady’s 
first light view of the treasure, her flipping the leaves over as 
if there were nothing in them worth waiting for: but now that 
she seemed to be getting engrossed in the book, now that 
her eyes had taken on a quite different look, now that she 
held the book attentively in her hands — she didn’t know but 
that she minded that even more. Who was this woman to be 
coming in between her and . . . 

She stopped herself. There was no Robert of that kind 
any more. The Robert whom she might have had — would have 
had — to hand over to this woman didn’t exist any more. The 
Robert who was now wasn’t for marriage or love — of that 
kind. She rose and stood looking down on Miss Martyn with 
grave eyes. 

“Ye’ll know, I guess,” she said, “what to do with ut. I’ve 
give ut ye” — she stopped. “He spoke of ye onest,” she said 
with a final impulse of confession. “He said, ‘Wait fer me. 
I’ll come . . .”’ 

There was a long pause. 

The book had fallen into Eileen Martyn’s lap. There was 
no laugh now about her as she faced Katie McGee: and 
when she spoke, her voice was almost as grave as Miss McGee’s 
own. “Miss McGee,” she said, “leave this” — she tapped the 
pages in her lap — “with me. I’ll” — she paused. “I’ll do my 
best with it,” she said. And then, after a moment she added, 
“Trust me.” And she looked Katie McGee full in the face 
with her understanding eyes. 

Once outside again Miss McGee paused in the road. She 
felt it would be impossible for her to go back to her tidied flat, 
with the tidied flat up above that contained only emptiness. 
She said to herself as she stood there, “Some things can be 
and some can’t. This one can’t — now anyway.” And, quite 
without her reason having anything to do with it, her thoughts 
turned to her sister and Garryton; and her feet, again without 
her own volition, as it seemed, turned instinctively to the car- 
line that led to Garryton. 

All the time in the car she sat passive. She had drunk at 
the Lady’s part of a cup of tea — with the greatest difficulty. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


385 

It was almost impossible for her to swallow. In her throat 
there seemed to be something that prevented her from swallow- 
ing, something that jerked upward whenever she wished to put 
anything down. But, at the Lady’s earnest request, she had 
managed to drink a little of the cup of tea. She had refused 
all solid eatables, as an impossibility. The mouthfuls of tea 
stayed her now that she was in the car. She sat, leaned back 
against the wicker seat (as she had leaned that time they went 
together to the Summer Park!) and she felt once more not 
so unhappy. The old feeling of being stayed by something 
had come back. She thought at that moment of her despair 
on the hill with a sort of wonder — was it she who had felt 
with that intensity? Was it possible for anyone to feel like 
that? She felt merely tired now, tired excessively, and as if 
she had done a great piece of business — the only piece of busi- 
ness that mattered — in having given the Lady the Canada 
Book to have and hold, and in having told her everything. 
Miss McGee did not ask herself why it was so important that 
she should have done these things. She merely felt it was 
important. She felt that, now that was done, she could 
legitimately rest: and she leaned back against the wicker seat, 
resting. She trusted the Lady. 

When the stopping-place for Garryton came, she got off 
the car. And, as the car sped on its swift electric way, she 
stood on the side-walk a moment, gazing about her into the 
darkness. It was perfectly dark now. The short November 
day had drawn into night, and it seemed impossible that, only a 
few hours before, there had been a brilliant blue sky overhead, 
and a blazing sun burning down on the hill — where Robert 
was laid. Miss McGee remembered, standing in the darkness 
of Massonville, that there had been a tiny bird on a bough not 
far off from Robert’s — grave (how queer that sounded!) which 
had sung him to rest. She had not consciously noticed it at 
the time, but now it came over her that it had been so; and 
she was glad to think that there had been music at the grave- 
side, and sunlight. She thought she would not have liked 
him — she no longer called him Mr. Fulton in her thoughts — 
to be laid away with the rain driving over him and the rough 
wind blowing. She had the feeling that he was her child. 
And she wanted him to have all the beauty she could get 
for him — even at the last. Sunlight, and the waving of the 
trees, and the sweetness of a bird’s song. Once more the 
thought of God swept over her, and this time with such 


3 86 OUR LITTLE LIFE 

force that it seemed to sway her from side to side as she 
stood in the road. 

“It’ll be the weakness of me,” she thought, catching at 
nothingness. And then the feeling of God and His imminence 
passed away from her again. And, as she walked in the di- 
rection of Garryton, she thought, “I’ll see Father O’Rourke to- 
morrow, God bless urn, an’ I’ll tell um everythin’.” The face of 
Father O’Rourke, not jolly and round as it was in the street, 
but exalted and apart as it had been in the motor-car when he 
drove through the city holding high the Blessed Sacrament, 
came over her. She felt for a moment like kneeling in the 
dark road . . . and then that other thought of God came back 
again. Not the God one kneels to but the God one receives 
with open arms into one’s heart. 

She went slowly along the road. 

It never occurred to her that they would be surprised to see 
her at Garryton. The thought of the years when she had re- 
fused to go there was wiped away from her. The idea that 
she wouldn’t go to Garryton because Mary had been luckier 
than she and was higher up in the world and that therefore 
she — Katie McGee — would be seen at a disadvantage in Mary’s 
environment seemed an idea that was impossible to conceive. 
Miss McGee couldn’t believe, walking along the Massonville 
road, that she had ever cherished such an idea. It seemed 
an infinitely small idea — as small as the smallest microbe in 
the world and an idea that was as destructive as that microbe 
if you were so foolish as to cherish it. But to Miss McGee 
it seemed as if she never could have cherished it. It seemed 
to her that she hadn’t come to Garryton all these years — why? 
Oh, because Mary and she had fallen out of the way of 
seeing life the same. Mary had seen life one way, and she, 
Katie, had seen it another. But that was long ago — all past. 
And now to-night — they would see all that was essential of 
life the same way. Exactly. 

Katie McGee pressed the electric bell at the Garryton door; 
and when Kathryn, her namesake, answered it, she stood 
silently looking in at the hall. The hall was improved since 
she saw it years ago. Money had come into it. It was clothed 
and furnished as it had not been the last time she came to it. 
There was a big expensive gramophone in the comer by the 
stairs, and there was a portiere hanging that, quite instinctively, 
Miss McGee reckoned up as “havin’ cawsted mooney.” 

“Mother in, Katie, eh?” she said. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


387 


She was surprised to find her voice quite normal. 

And when Mrs. Garry came out of the living-room — the front 
room by the door — and called to her, “Katie! Why, Katie, come 
in !” — she came in, and submitted to Mrs. Garry’s kisses and 
welcome. Mary McGee had always been fonder of demon- 
strations of affection than Katie had. 

“I tha’aht I’d come along,” she said — and disengaged herself 
gently from Mrs. Garry’s arms. “I tha’aht I’d jes’ come 
along.” 

“Why didn’t ye ’phone up, eh, an’ say ye was cornin’?” Mrs. 
Garry said. “There’s Dad” (she too said “Dad”) “jes’ gawn 
along to’s meetin’.” (Tim Garry was a Member of every 
right-minded Committee, and never missed a Meeting of any 
of them.) “He’ll be sawry, Kitty. My dear, ef ye’d jes’ 
’phoned up . . 

Mrs. Garry led Katie into the living-room she had just 
come out of. Nellie was there, and little Mae. Ag was out at 
Ed’s. She had “run around,” it seemed, to see “ef her fy-ance 
was gittin’ along a’alroight.” And Rose was up-stairs with 
the flu. “So we’re a hen-party, Auntie, eh,” Nellie said. “Rose 
ain’t too bad. I’ll go put the kettle on.” And before Miss 
McGee could say no, she was gone to the kitchen to put the 
ever-hospitable kettle on. The Garrys, for all their getting 
up in the world, did not keep “a girl” yet. There was no 
hired help in the house. The girls, assisting Mother, “did the 
work.” 

As Miss McGee was sitting in the front room with the light 
on her face, Katie Garry said suddenly, “Say, Auntie, what’s the 
matter, eh?” And then, this remark having brought every 
eye on her, everyone said, “Auntie” or “Katie” as the case might 
be, “what’s the matter!” 

There was a mirror in a chiffonier just opposite where Katie 
McGee had seated herself and, as they asked her this ques- 
tion, she, quite unexpectedly and casually, caught sight of 
herself reflected in this mirror. She saw a face that at first 
she did not recognize. A face, pale as death, with large 
meaningless eyes looking out of it. The mouth was pinched 
and white. And there was a curious expression on the face 
that she did not recognize as her own. It was an expression, 
half of exaltation and half of indifference. She recognized 
after a second, with an effort, as if the thinking processes were 
not going on quite normally inside of her — as if they were 
blocked — that the expression was exactly as she felt. This 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


388 

feeling of the imminence of God, that came to her at moments, 
was the exalted look that was in her face; and this feeling of 
surprise that she could feel nothing, that came to her at all 
the other times, was the feeling of indifference in her face. 
That moment of despair on the hill had made her deathly pale 
— had sunken her eyes and pinched her lips — but otherwise 
it wasn’t there in her face. There had only been that one 
moment of despair. She felt as if she should never have it 
again — as if it would kill her if it were to come to her 
again . . . like that. 

“I’ve had the bad toime,” she said — quite calmly: “in the 
house there. Them Buildin’s is runnin’ with the flu. I been 
up noights nursin’ em and seein’ to ’em.” She paused a second. 
“That’s why I come,” she said. “I felt loike I wanted to see 
ye all an’ see ye was well. An’ have a rest.” 

“Kitty” Mrs. Garry said impulsively — it was the old Mary 
speaking this time. “Stawp roight here fer a bit, eh? Come 
on . We’d jes’ love to have ye. The gir-rls is woild to have 
Auntie come. An’ you kin take care of Rose. She thinks the 
wor-rld of ye, Kitty, Rose does . . . 

Nellie and little Mae chimed in. They all wanted her to 
stay. There was an air of affection and warmth about them, 
and the affection and warmth seemed to go a little way in 
through the coldness Miss McGee felt all round her — and raise 
the temperature, for a moment, as it were. And then, though 
she saw the reflection in the mirror smile quite kindly, she 
shook her head. 

“I can’t stawp to-night, Mary,” she said. “They need me 
there ...” 

And suddenly the thought flashed across her that she had to 
go back to Penelope’s Buildings — and live there. 

When “Auntie” — the other Auntie, the sister of Tim, Auntie 
Nellie Garry — came in, once more it seemed an impossibility 
to Miss McGee that she could ever have felt any rancor 
towards her. Such a feeling seemed a sort of impossibility 
in the world at all. It seemed to Miss McGee that jealousy — 
and envy — and malice — are such tiny things that they have no 
right to exist. When Auntie Nellie said, “Ye’re changed, 
Katie McGee,” it seemed to Miss McGee as if someone were 
saying that a great way off. As if the speech came from too 
great a way off to be capable of hurting her. She answered 
Auntie Nellie with the same composure that she had an- 
swered the others. She looked at her carefully waved hair, 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


389 

at the “set” of her clothes, with a sort of surprise. “She’ll be 
tryin’ to look young, eh” — the thought flitted through her 
mind. “Sure, she was always a silly woman,” Katie McGee 
said to herself: and Auntie Nellie fell out of her mind as 
Mrs. Glassridge had fallen out when she fled from danger. 
Both these women seemed to Miss McGee too small to worry 
about. She just let them fall through — and become non-existent 
for her . . . 

Rose brought her to earth again — for a moment. When 
she went up to see Rose, she saw that Rose was ill: and into 
her mind, just for a passing second, there swept that maternal 
feeling she had for those who were sick. “Ye’re feelin’ bad, 
eh, me dear,” she said, sitting down beside the bed. “Ye’re 
not feelin’ good, eh.” And she laid her cold hand on Rose’s 
brow and smoothed the hair away from her face, and then 
quietly let her hand slip into Rose’s and let the two lie clasped 
on the counterpane. 

They said nothing for a long time. They were alone together 
in the room. And then, suddenly, quite without any prepara- 
tion, Rose said, “Auntie, is he married yet?” 

And Miss McGee answered, “I don’t know, me dear.” 

And then there was a long long silence between them. 

It seemed aeons before Rose spoke again. She said, “He sent 
his picture.” And then after a long time more she said, 
“There was her picture with ut.” 

It passed through Miss McGee’s mind that this was a cruel 
thing of Mac: and, as if Rose had read this thought in her, 
she said hurriedly, “He wrote me.” 

They were quiet again. 

And then — it seemed another of the impossibilities of the 
world — Rose was weeping, and sobbing in her bed. “I loved 
um,” she said. “Oh, Auntie, I loved um. How shall I bear 
ut . . . ?” 

When Miss McGee went down-stairs again she refused to sit 
down. She said she must go. She had tried to drink the cup 
of tea Nellie had made for her — and she had failed. That 
thing in her throat was insistent and would not let her swallow. 
She had tried so evidently hard that Mrs. Garry had let her 
be; but an anxious look had come into Mrs. Garry’s face 
as she had said, “Won’t ye stawp, eh, Kitty? We’ll make 
the bed up in a minnut, an’ we’ve no one to send to the car 
with ye, Tim bein’ out an’ all. . . .” 

Miss McGee had laughed a little at this. It seemed odd that 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


390 

she could laugh, but she had laughed. “Mary,” she said, 
reaching up to kiss her — Mrs. Garry was a fine tall stout 
woman — “I’ve had to be about all my loife long alone, me 
dear. I’ll git home a’alroight. Don’t worry.” And, with a 
curious impulse she didn’t try to explain to herself, she had 
put her arms round Mrs. Garry’s neck and kissed her with a 
long kiss. “We’re sisters, Mary,” she said, “the same mother 
bore us.” And Mrs. Garry, with that queer capacity she had 
for always saying the wrong thing at the critical time, had 
answered, “Kitty, we’ll never quarrel again.” And then she 
had added, “Will we?” And, just for the fraction of a second, 
the plate of cold turkey rose up before Miss McGee’s vision 
as it had risen up for six long years. 

It all fell away from her as she went out on to the door- 
step. She had said good-by to Nellie — with once more that 
pleasure in having something to give her that would help her 
in her career: and to Katie — indifferently to Katie: and to 
Mae, little Mae, who had been called after “Grandma’a” who 
had been “Mary”: and then, distantly, to Auntie Nellie. And, 
with them all congregated under the big electric light outside 
the Garryton hall door — one of the new elegancies that had 
come into fashion since the days of Katie McGee there — she had 
made her way towards the car. It was a little way she had 
to go, all in the dark. There was something wrong with the 
big light at the end of the road, and it was not burning. It 
was very dark, but Katie McGee knew the way. She had 
made that road — how many many times in the years gone by! 
She turned, as she reached the limits of the arc of light thrown 
by the hall-lamp of Garryton, and she had waved her hand to 
the group at the door. It had passed through her mind that 
they looked grouped for a “picture,” Auntie Nellie in the front 
place, of course, and Mrs. Garry so tall and fair and handsome 
behind, and Nellie, dark and interesting-looking bending for- 
ward to see the last of Auntie, and little Mae (who, it ap- 
peared, was on the brink of matrimony too, “goin’ with a fella” 
— even little Mae!) waving a hand in the front row beside 
Auntie Nellie Garry. “They’re a foine fam’ly, God bless ’em,” 
Miss McGee said. “Glory be to God, the McGees’ll not go out 
yet.” And through the back of her mind there passed the old 
regret that Mary had had no living son to carry on the name of 
McGee. 

Miss McGee walked on towards the car. She walked in the 
middle of the road since it seemed to her better walking there. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


391 


She resolutely set her mind against thinking of what was at 
the other end of that car-drive. She thrust Penelope’s Build- 
ings out of her mind. For, if she had thought of them, it 
would have seemed to her — she knew it — impossible to enter 
there, whence Robert’s dead body had been carried only that 
morning. Was it only that morning! Was it possible that 
Robert had only left Penelope’s Buildings those few hours 
ago ! It seemed a century since she had stood on the hill in the 
morning sunshine with the hot tears of despair running down 
her face and trickling saltly into her mouth. It seemed an- 
other life since she and Robert had sat one at each side of 
that little table — he intent on the pages before him, she sitting, 
taking in each particle of his flesh with her loving eyes . . . 

And now she was alone. 

It was at the moment that the word “alone” fell, as it were, 
into her mind that she heard a great rushing sound behind her. 
Absolutely without her will working, from the most primitive 
instinct, she must have leaped aside, for when her intelligence 
told her that danger was behind her, when she realized again 
what was happening, she was lying in the rut between the 
side-walk and the road. A great car — it might have been 
Biddy Ryan’s ly-mousine — had gone flashing past her: when 
Miss McGee picked herself up, shaken but unhurt, she stood a 
moment gazing after it, collecting her scattered wits. “Why 
didn’t I stawp an’ let ut run roight over me,” was the first 
collected thought she was conscious of thinking. Had she 
wanted to die as she thought she did, had she missed Robert 
as she thought she missed him — would she have leapt for life — 
would she not have stood where she was and let this great 
leviathan crush her? Then one of the other Miss McGees 
pushed up inside of her. The sense of her wickedness came 
over her. “Sure, God forgive me,” she said to herself, “is 
ut after killin’ yerself ye are, ye little black divil !” And with 
the old familiar phrase her mother’s gentle smiling face came 
up before her. “Ma’a, Ma’a,” she said, with a sort of sob: 
she stood a moment longer, collecting her thoughts and wonder- 
ing, would she go back to Garryton and stay the night as 
Mary wished her to. 

She walked slowly on. They were too happy there. She 
didn’t grudge them their happiness, God forbid, but she felt 
as if she couldn’t be with them. And as little could she be 
with Rose, the poor girl, weeping after an utterly lost Mac. 
What a world. 


392 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


She went to where the car-stop was, and waited there. Her 
mind was a sort of blank. She knew that she was on her 
way back to Penelope’s Buildings, but her mind refused to en- 
visage the fact. She was in one of those merciful stupors that 
come between bursts of excessive sorrow. The thought of God 
was gone. She was unable to summon up any thought of God 
at all. He was far away — in some inaccessible spot: perhaps 
Robert was with Him. Perhaps not . . . 

When the car came up she climbed stiffly in. She was sur- 
prised to find that she was trembling all over. She hadn’t 
been touched by the motor-car, she hadn’t been hurt by her 
fall in the gutter, only bruised a little, but it had been a 
close shave. The motor had almost touched her — it had been 
by a sort of miracle that she had been drawn out of its fatal 
orbit. Her nerves — as her muscles had borne her out of 
danger quite without her volition or consent — now took the 
matter into their own hands. She trembled so that she could 
hardly mount the step. 

“Ye’re tired, sure,” a big bent man said to her as she came 
inside the car. He had the seat nearest the door, and he got out 
of it, and gently forced Miss McGee down into his place. 

“Sure, no, I’m not tired,” he said. “I’ll stand an’ welcome.” 
He joined the long row of men and woman hanging each to its 
own strap the length of the car. The car was packed. Masson- 
ville was full of munition factories, erected since the War, 
and even now, when the false peace had been celebrated and 
Canada knew that a true peace was at hand, the workers were 
at work producing things with which to kill their fellow-men. 

The car was packed with men and women. Rough dirty 
specimens of humanity they were, tired with a day’s work, 
talkative some of them, giggling some, others sunk either in 
the evening paper which it was hard to read by the insufficient 
light, or else deep in a sort of lethargy of dim reflection. 
What were they thinking about, these people? Of the past day’s 
work, of the next day’s work, of the meal they would have, 
getting home, of the pipe, the rest, the night’s sleep . . . 

Yes, they were a rough lQt. Miss McGee, from her seat 
nearest the door, looked down the car. She was sunk in her- 
self, sunk in her sorrow and her sense of the futility of all 
things, and yet, with a wandering upper part of herself — and 
partly, perhaps, to relieve the sense of futility and sorrow — 
she was able to look round about her, see what was passing, 
make her comments on it. 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


393 

‘They’re the bum lot,” was what passed through her mind. 
She wondered what Robert would have thought of them — he 
that had hardly been able to sit next Dan at Mrs. Morphy’s 
supper-table. And then — where did it come from? — there 
sailed through her mind a phrase from Robert’s Canada Book. 
‘The immigrant does lose something when he crosses the ocean, 
but he loses I suppose, as we all do, in order that he may gain.’ 

“Bless um, bless um,” she thought. A great lump came up 
into her throat. She felt choked — her eyes were veiled by a 
mist of tears. But they were not the hot scalding despairing 
tears of the morning, not the jealous tears of the afternoon — 
they were the good tears — that help . . . 

“Bless um,” she thought again, “he’ll come back, the bo’oy, to 
help me . . .” 

‘Gain.’ 

She glanced round the car again. She saw the rough faces, 
she smelt the unwashedness all round about her. But behind 
the dirt, deep below the unwashedness — this time she was con- 
scious of the humanity that united them and her. They were 
all striving — all pushing on. To what? To that underworld, 
at the door of which Robert Fulton had knocked so often — 
the underworld where humanity feels alike, and recognizes 
that it has a common root. Miss McGee felt that her hand 
was on the very handle of a door leading — where? Her 
unhappiness ceased to be an agony. 

“He’ll be givin’ me the seat an’ him toired,” she thought, 
her mind shaping itself to a practical end: and she glanced 
up into the face of the man that had stood up at her en- 
trance. 

He smiled down on her. 

“Feelin’ 'better some?” he enquired. 

She nodded. 

“ ’Tis a cold night, sure,” the man went on. “The winter’s 
cornin’, Ma’am.” 

The same old things. The same old human things that we say 
to one another, generation in and generation out. As Miss Mc- 
Gee replied to this neighbor of hers who had wished to help 
her, who had shown her good-will, she felt — it was inexplicable 
— as if her feeling to life changed. It wasn't a mess. The 
world was a mess, but not life. God was ordering life. How 
had she ever thought that He could make a mess . . . ? 

The future she had before her in Penelope’s Buildings 
stretched not quite unbearable after all — because it was a part 


394 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 


of life. She had her own little room where her dear had 
so often sat and read to her. She had those round about her, 
less fortunate even than herself sometimes, to tend and help. 
There were her nieces at Garryton — young . . . they had life 
before them. Could she not help them too? All the bitterness 
she had drawn out of life seemed suddenly precious to her . . . 
because she felt that — changed — she could give it away again: 
and she loved giving. The thought of God came back. And 
this time she did not feel giddy and dazed as she had felt 
in the road at Masson ville. Was not God human — and kind? 

“Good noight to ye,” she said to the man, getting up out of 
the seat he had given her, “an’ thank ye.” 

“Ye’re welcome, Ma’am,” he replied. 

As she got off the car and turned into Drayton Place, the 
chime of St. Patrick’s went three-quarters of eleven. “ ’Tis late 
I am,” she thought to herself mechanically. And then, as the 
thought of those sick and waiting for her — and she neglecting 
them all day! — came into her mind, she began to hurry. She 
hurried as she had hurried on that day so long ago when' 
she had been coming home to get Robert’s supper — that day 
when she had hardly known him at all. He was not there. 
He was gone out of Penelope’s Buildings, and she had to 
make those Buildings her home all the rest of her lonely life. 
As she turned into the battered door and went across the little 
passage, she seemed to see Mrs. Morphy, dead, with Nonnie 
bending over her. She saw the tart helping her to lay out the 
body of the man she loved — just three stairs up. She saw the 
man she loved — clear before her — smiling with that smile that 
had first drawn him into her heart. And with this thought 
of him, another — an absurd and useless thought — went through 
her like a knife. Uncle’s coat with the new velvet collar that 
she had put on it was lying upstairs — and there was no 
Robert to wear it. Robert would never feel the winter’s cold 
again . . . and then, through that thought, swamping it and 
all her egoism like a tidal wave, came the other bigger, greater 
thought — God was near: she could help and tend Him. She 
went up the worn and slanting steps. 










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